I posted this at Mamatron, in a NICU mamas thread, and thought I'd paste it here, too, just so. I haven't written much about Amelia's NICU stay; her birthstory I wrote didn't cover it, so here's a little bit of rambling about it:

My DD was born at 34weeks2day; my waters had broken at 33w4days, smashing our plans for a homebirth. I spent her first two days walking from my "post-partum" room to the NICU and back, pumping, and eating. The evening I was discharged was the hardest day of my life... for the first time ever (if you count the egg that became her :) ) in my life, I was leaving her, and we got the Mean Nurse that day, who really pushed me to LEAVE. I hate her. She also had me feed DD her first bottle, and had me do it with her burritowrapped. I had spent two days breastfeeding her as often as I could, and as much time with her just in her diaper, under my shirt against my skin, with a warm blanket over us, and here I was, doing a thing I had no idea how to do (feed a bottle), to this creature all wrapped up and with a hat and with just her little preemie monkeyface looking out. Not once, before or after that moment, did she ever look like a preemie to me, but that afternoon, my last one before I would have to spend my nights somewhere else, there she was, an anonymous NICU baby.

I spent the next 16 days commuting the 30 minutes each way to the hospital, and spending 12-15 hours there. The early days were tough, because she was under the bili lights and I could only hold her for 30 minutes at a time, but I sat there. I cleared her alarms (look at the baby, not the machines), I alerted nurses to other babies' issues, I looked for any excuse to hold mine. Once she was off the bili lights I could hold her more, but I was still only allowed to nurse her 2 or 3 times a day. I pumped every two hours (four hours at night), I gave her supplemental bottles after nursing. After day 6, it was all my milk- before that she'd gotten a little formula, and some banked breastmilk, before I was producing enough for her. I read "Our Babies, Ourselves" while sitting by her incubator, and when I'd go to lunch, and I thought about how I should write an article on Attachment Parenting In The NICU (I still think I should, and maybe her first birthday this week is a good time to approach that). I pumped and nursed and sat and held and she was fine. She was always fine. She came out of me yelling and settled down to nurse immediately (my homebirth midwife was with me at the birth and she was my mamabear, and my healthy preemie stayed with me for an hour after she was born because she made that happen). She fed, and grew, and I think she could have done that at home but you don't sign a 34weeker out AMA and expect to not have CPS come knocking... I felt that the whole time I was in the NICU, that feeling that I could push, but I couldn't push TOO much or the social workers would come. The little boy next to my little one, born addicted to heroin, with both his parents coming, sometimes together and fighting, sometimes separately... listening to that mother's conversation with the county services worker... I remember those things very clearly. Here I was, a White Middle Class Insured Adult Married Woman, I had pretty much nothing to worry about but I knew the nurses were watching even if they didn't want to.

The doctor was very conservative, and my baby came home at least three days later than even the nurses felt she could have. All I wanted was to have that baby home- I ached. I went to Thanksgiving dinner with family at a restaurant a half mile from the hospital because I said I wouldn't go if we had the dinner further away. It was the worst Thanksgiving of my life, and I broke down crying so hard during it... I think it was the first my parents realized that OhSoStrong Q was really, REALLY affected by my baby being in the NICU and not with me. She came home on December 1. We stopped at KMart on the way to the hospital that morning after getting The Call, to pick up an infant carseat. I'd looked while she was in the NICU but just couldn't buy one- didn't like any of them. I couldn't buy ANYTHING for her when I'd go shopping as a "break" from the NICU (breaks. feh), and I hated it- I hated seeing people buying baby stuff for their babies that they HAD. They didn't know how lucky they were. She came home and she and I retired to her room, where we sat in the glider chair and nursed and slept and I typed one-handed (I'm a geek, so be it), and we cuddled together on the bed, and kept the room dark and pleasant and warm. This is how we would have gotten through if they would have just let me taken her home when she was born, and she would have been fine.

Now it's a year later: her birthday is Wednesday. I just had to get up to go watch when DH called me in- she was holding his knees and he'd back up and she'd step forward to keep up. Step. Step. Step. She's beautiful and strong and perfect.

Here's us on her first day:

And here she is on halloween: