Day 74

I sold Damian's mountain bike (MTB) this evening. Parting with it was not difficult as he barely rode it. What was difficult and caught me completely by surprise was what happened on the way home: I drove by the hospital where Damian was born. 

Damian was born just after 3PM the afternoon of Thursday, March 23, 2006 at Northside Hospital. He was 5 1/2 weeks premature. Dawn had gotten a call from her OB the day before saying it was time for Damian to make his grand entrance into the world. Apparently, some test they had run on Dawn the day before that had come back with some alarming results.  The conclusion reached by her doctor being that it was best for both Dawn and Damian if Damian were born ASAP. I don't know that I was ever told exactly what was going wrong with Dawn but they were not messing around – an emergency C-section was ordered and, lock and load, the next day we were parents. 

Northside Hospital is colloquially known as "Atlanta's baby factory". This is THE place to go when you are expecting. I don't know why, it just is. The maternity wards at Northside are always in constant turnover. Many of the people have either had babies there or were born there themselves. Some can even lay claim to both. Fortunately for us, along with all these babies comes top-notch medical care. Which Damian needed. Not that he was in acute distress but, at 5 1/2 weeks early, he did have some serious issues that had to be carefully attended to. I remember that his blood pressure wasn't regulating normally for the first few days he was in the neonatal intensive care unit, referred to by the staff as the "NIC-U". After they got his blood pressure under control, they had to put him under the tanning lamp for a couple of days to deal with jaundice. And he wouldn't eat. We were told that he wasn't allowed to go home until he drank an entire bottle of milk within so many minutes. All told he was at Northside for about 2 1/2 weeks. By the end, we were getting impatient and ready to have him home. The drive back and forth was not great. 

One  silver lining from his time in the hospital is that we got lots of on-the-job parent training from the nurses. How to change a diaper, how to feed, how to burp, how to use a car seat carrier. How to do almost everything. We were equal parts super excited and terrified. I was aghast at the idea that most new moms were sent home within hours of delivering a baby. They didn't get nearly the training we got and I was still scared to death to take Damian home that first day. 

I remember walking into the house with Damian for the fist time. He was strapped into his car seat carrier. My mom took pictures. My dad was there and I could tell that he was also excited. (Funny side note: while Damian was in the NIC-U, I took my dad in to see him. After a couple of minutes of looking at Damian laying in his incubator, my dad blurts out: "This is kind of like watching paint dry." Seriously, he said those words!  I told him he could let himself out and let my mom in.) The first few days and weeks are a bit of a blur, but I do remember how excited I was. How seeing Damian, holding him, made me want to be a better version of myself. He was so pure. So perfect. 

Driving by the hospital tonight made me think of all of this. All the joy I had felt. And the fear, but mostly the joy. And then I remember that he's gone and it was like getting punched in the stomach all over again. I wanted to cry but forced myself not to. It was dark, traffic was heavy and I was driving so no time for tears or sobbing. 

I home now. Safe. And sad. Very, very sad. 

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