All it took was one day

All it took was one day for our lives to forever change. It took one single event for the life that we knew and had grown to love to be forever changed.

On June 2, my water broke and the world changed forever. I spent a little over 9 weeks stuck in a hospital room in a hospital bed. I then delivered our son 7 weeks early and spent another week stuck in that bed. Our son spent a total of nearly 4 weeks in that same hospital in a room right across from where I lived for so long.

In that time, and even since I've had so much time to sit and to think. I've had time to realize so many things that I never realized before. I realized who my true friends were and how much they truly meant to me. I will always be thankful to those who made such great efforts to not only make my stay tolerable, but also to bring my spirits up. I will always treasure every phone call, every surprise package and every visit I had.

Because of those realizations, I also came to the conclusion that I try to hard to be well liked and accepted. I LOVE doing things for people, but I think I now know that sometimes, they don't want for things to be done for them by me. And that's ok. It in no way hurts my feelings, at all. I will always be happy to do things for others and be proud to be able to do them, but I think from now on, I'm going to wait for them to ask instead of constantly offering. I think people who know me, know that I like to do it and won't have a problem with asking. And then, I don't have to feel like I'm going out of my way when I don't need to or really shouldn't.

I'm going to start concentrating more on those that matter and those that we matter to and less on those that don't. For example, I sent out well over 100 baby announcments and maybe a little over 1/2 of those people even aknowledged the birth of our son. When I send out pictures of Kaitlyn, I always send out about 35-40 envelopes of pictures. There are the same dozen or so that never aknowledge them. Why should I consider to waste my time, energy, money or thoughts on them? We know so many amazing people that show on a regular basis that they care, love and want to know us and really, I would rather invest more into those people. I would rather invest more into the people that want to be a part of our lives than those who couldn't care less.

I took so many little things for granted before that fateful day. Such as the ability to stand up in the shower. Or the oppurtunity to eat what I wanted exactly when I want to.

Before we went to the hospital on that fateful night we had the luxury of going where we wanted to, when we wanted to for as long as we wanted to. With Matthew's birth and homecoming, that luxury went out the window like a small piece of paper on a windy day.

We just finished week 1 of 8 isolation. Healthy people can visit us as long as they wash and sanitize their hands and refrain from smoking. But, we cannot go anywhere but the hospital. When we get to the Doctor's office, we have a special note so we don't wait with the rest of the patients. Our biggest goal is to keep Matthew healthy. Because of how narrowWhen we finish this round of isoloation, another starts with cold and flu season in November. We will be able to visit for holidays as long as no one is sick and it's a smoke free house. We've been told over and over by the nurses, neonatologists and pediatritions how important it is to stay away from those that are sick and cigarette smoke. Matthew's air way is the size of my pinky. A simple cold or respiratory virus will block his airway and require rehospitalization. Not even remotely close to something I want to experience.

Does it suck? Heck yeah it does. But, it's such a small price to pay for such a handsome little boy.

It does have it's advantages. We used to always be on the go. On the weekends we spent maybe an hour or two at home both days combined. During the week, we were rarely home. Now that we are home, and stuck here, Kaitlyn spent the first few days constantly asking "where are we going?" And when I would say "no where" she would look at me quizzically and say, "no mommy, WHERE are we going?" as though I misunderstood her.

Now that we are home more Kaitlyn has more time to play with all of her thousands of toys (and of course make a mess of them), we have more time to rest and we all have more time as a family to read stories, watch movies and sing songs. Kaitlyn has figured out her favorite place is the bathtub and easily takes 3 baths a day now so she can pretend to be the Little Mermaid. And really, our door is always open, anyone that wants to see us can whenever they want :)

Boy howdy this got long fast. I've had so much time lately to think and it's nice to finally be able to put all my thoughts in order and make sense of the all!