Off the O's for Good

Dear Ellie,

This time, it really is official...  no more oxygen!  For about a week, you bounced on and off the canula but as of 3 days ago, you came off and haven't looked back!  So with eating and breathing out of the way, nothing remains between you and home!  The date is set: this coming Friday.  Unfortunately, as if on cue, I got sick this past Saturday before the baby shower.  It's been 3 days since I've seen you and it may be longer.  Your mother has kept her distance too just in case she catches it from me.  It's hard being away from you and your mother, but pretty soon we'll have all the time in the world together!                  

Baby Downpour

Dear Ellie,

Yesterday was your baby shower.  I think its called a baby shower because gifts are basically precipitating everywhere.  As you can see from the picture above, we were nearly drowned in the affection of friends and family.  Had you been there, only one little footie would be sticking out from all of the boxes and gift wrap.  A more accurate description of the occasion would have been a "baby downpour" or a "baby landslide."  So to summarize, baby showers are dangerous, Ellie.  If you ever have a baby that a lot of people care about, wear a rain coat and head for high ground!

In all seriousness though, it was a very pleasant time.  We all went to faux Grandma and Grandpa Hightower's place and faux Aunt Danielle and REAL Aunt Danielle prepared a Hawaiian/Peacock themed event.  There were around 60 guests or so by my count, which meant lots and lots of free stuff for you!  Instead of cards for you, all of our guests brought their favorite childhood books instead and wrote you a message for when you are older.  In other words, we've already built an Ellie library!

The Ellie Itch

Dear Ellie,

It's official.  Your mother and I are beginning to go crazy.  If we were told that you had 3 more months to go in the hospital, we might not feel this way.  However, you've stalled inches from the finish line.  Every day is the day we might take you home, but upon the setting of the sun, the finish line is pushed back by another 24 hours.  A week ago, you were likely a week from going home.  Now, a week later... you are again a "week from going home."  You are clinging to a tiny, tiny bit of oxygen.  Technically, you could come home with us now since you've passed your car seat test, hearing test, and just about every other diagnostic.  However, it's just that tiny bit of oxygen...  Ironically, if your respiratory support were greater, they'd probably just send you home on respiratory support, but your oxygen support is so tiny right now that it doesn't make sense to send you home with thousands of dollars worth of instruments if you are just going to wean off of it a few days later.  The idea is that its probably just better to wait a few more days in the NICU, wean off here, and go home "low tech."  

I'm inclined to agree with this perspective, but the "itch" to take you home is grating on us.  I find myself running little thought experiments in my head...  For instance, if you mother was waiting in a getaway vehicle at the hospital front entrance, could I snatch you out of your crib and make a go for the exit before security took me down?

Bye bye, Ellie-phant ears

Dear Ellie,

This letter is all about your ears.  The first important bit of news involves your hearing.  Since you were given antibiotics for your infections on a number of occasions, there was an acute chance that your hearing could be damaged or even gone all together.  Your mother and I wrung our hands for awhile because you didn't seem to respond much to the wailing babies and ear piercing alarms around you.  Just recently though, you had your hearing test and it appears that your hearing is just fine!

Oddly, I hadn't looked at your ears for months until just yesterday.  I still remember in the days after you were born, your ears were like elephant ears.  They had almost no form or structure of their own and when you laid on one side for too long, your ears would roll up into little burritos.  The nurses had to unroll them in order for them to grow in properly!  Somewhere along the way, however, your little elephant ears became real ears!

Seeing them appear on you like that, fully formed, made me look at the rest of you in relation to what you once were.  Now, at 5 pounds, I'm amazed by how much you've changed.  I remember your eyes used to be fused shut.  Your body was a featureless, translucent, veiny mass.  Your butt was completely flat.  Your arms and legs were twigs.  You didn't have a single bit of fat on your body.  Ten weeks ago, I couldn't possibly imagine you as you are now.

The One Puzzle Piece

Dear Ellie,

Every day when your mother and I come to stay with you, the path to the NICU leads us through the waiting room of labor and delivery and past the full term nursery.  Being in and out of the NICU numerous times a day has exposed us to the story of childbirth for many months now.  Every time we come in and out, we see little snapshots of that story.  A baby slowly making its way toward postpartum in a wheeled bassinet.  A pregnant woman pacing the hallway.  Family members camped out in the waiting room, their faces some mix of suspense and boredom.

It's as though the story of childbirth has been chopped up into tiny little puzzle pieces.  Stick around long enough, and you see that story reassembled scores of times from a thousand different lives.        
Sadly, we won't ever experience that story for ourselves because there is only one piece we share in common with it: when at last we will take you home  And even that one piece seems like something that belongs in some other life, not ours.

I've lost count of the number of families I've seen disembarking the hospital, baby carrier in arm.  For the first 2 months after you were born, I'd just look at them blankly as they left, unable to imagine that we'd one day be doing the same.  The evidence of our first two months in the hospital shouts otherwise.  Pregnant women come in every day and leave the next with a baby.  For the longest time, whenever I walked by the full term nursery, I glance across the cribs filled with those full term behemoths.  Creatures that appear as though they belong to some entirely different species of life form.  Then I'd move on to the NICU to hold your tiny little body.  How could we possibly have an ending like all the other parents, I wondered, having come from such a different place?  To me, it seemed far more appropriate that the three of us would board a rocket ship upon your discharge and blast away for some life in deep space, as though your NICU stay was just the beginning of our high tech journey.

But now?  We come to the hospital every day knowing that, perhaps, we might be leaving with a baby the next.  When I walk by the full term nursery and then come to visit you, those babies don't look very different than you, anymore.  I'm beginning to feel as though that one little puzzle piece might snap into our lives, after all.

Filling an Ellie Shaped Hole in Our Hearts

Dear Ellie,

For the longest time, there was an Ellie shaped hole in our hearts.  An Ellie shaped hole that we tried to fill with cats.  There were three of them in all, which was two more than required to meet the "crazy-cat-people" threshold.  Before we started accumulating cats, we used to make fun of people like ourselves.  How far we have fallen.  We only ever wanted just one cat, but whenever there was some wretched animal in need, our hearts melted and we added another liter box to the corner of our house.

Lucky looking all fluffy and 'sploded

The first unintended cat was Lucky.  We met Lucky when your Uncle Zack told us about a poor cat that was neglected during kitten hood and was now living at the vet.  When we went to see her, she looked up at us with her big, dumb eyes and began rubbing us furiously with her massive fangs (which we surmised meant that she either loved us or wanted to eat us).  When we took her home, though, our original cat, Chicken-the-Unrepentant-Bastard-Cat, attacked her.  Poor Lucky was miserable, so we decided to return her back to the vet.  Lucky snuggled me all the way to the vet in order to make me feel like a horrible human being.  I left her in the car when I went inside and the receptionist at the vet greeted me and said, "How are things doing with your cute little kitty!  I think its so wonderful that you found the goodness in your heart to take in an animal in need!  Now what were you here for?"

I skulked around a bit, and having no other viable excuse for why I was there other than to give Lucky back, I left a $50 donation instead.  I departed after that, cat still in tow.  Lucky has been our extremely fluffy, loyal animal companion ever since.

Missy chilling on my lap, watching Walking Dead with me      

Our second unintentional cat was Miss Fortune, or "Missy" as we call her now.  When Missy showed up at our door, she had chewed up ears, arthritis, a gaping wound on her leg, and was utterly covered with scars.  One such scar was on her neck from some prior, grave wound which made what would have otherwise been a cute "meow" sound more like a "smoker's meow."  Apparently, our neighbors had her declawed and then tossed her to the curb to be chewed up by neighborhood dogs.  She had a few "trust" issues initially given her history, but we fixed Missy up and despite the abuse and she turned into quite the loveable lap cat.  Now, she follows me wherever I go.  It's amazing what love and kindness will do.

Unfortunately, due to your chronic lung disease, our nice, fluffy kitties can't stay with us any longer.  Too many allergens could cause some pretty severe issues with your breathing, not to mention both of your parents are already asthmatics!

So why have I mentioned the cats here in your letters?  Well, a lot of people are following your journey, it turns out.  Perhaps, if Lucky and Miss Fortune are lucky and fortunate enough, some gentle soul that is reading your letters might come and rescue them!...  otherwise, its off to a shelter for the both of them!  It'll be sad seeing them both sitting in cages underneath a leaky roof.  Shivering.  Dejected.  Hair matted and skinny from starvation.  An expression of betrayal in their eyes.  People generally don't like black cats even if they are nice, so I'm sure that Lucky and Miss Fortune will be whisked off to the chopping block or shipped away to the kitty cat glue factory...  Unless someone were to take pity on them and takes them in, of course!

Like You'd Been There All Along

Dear Ellie,

This weekend, we neglected you so that we wouldn't neglect your nursery.  We went to the Smith House and began work on the walls.  We wanted to paint something that was beautiful and a little bit abstract.  Something that would stick in your mind as one of your earliest memories.  We settled on butterflies that migrate around the room to, and from, a whimsical tree, tossled about by the wind.  The fact that we had 0 manual dexterity when it comes to artwork made this tricky though...  so we conscripted Grandpa and told him what we had in mind.  He sketched the tree from ceiling to floor and then your mother and I did our very, very best to color between the lines.  I'm sure you'll know the tree very, very well by the time you read these letters.

The whole thing was quite nostalgic, actually.  Half my lifetime ago, I was in the same room around the same time of year doing something very similar.  I was 15 years old then, and your mother and I were dating.  Because she'd gone out of town and I missed her, I decided to stick thousands of tiny glow in the dark stars on the ceiling.  I replicated the major constellations, added a dense Milky Way, and then surprised her when she was back in town.  Fifteen years later, most of the stars are still there.  It'll be an odd feeling when you finally leave the hospital and take up residence in that room.  It will feel as though you are nestling in next to our memories, too.  Like you'd somehow been there all along.