"Just once I'd like someone to call me 'sir' without adding, 'you're making a scene.'" -- Homer Simpson
I'm pretty sure there isn't a doctor or nurse on the floor who hasn't walked in on me crying in our room.
This hospital stay has not been the happiest one. I have only taken a handful of pictures with the good camera, and I certainly haven't opened my laptop until now. I've been here since Thursday afternoon and I've lost all sense of time and space and perspective and reality.
When I look at our babies, our John Kyle and our Mack, my heart aches with how much I love them already, how gorgeous and amazing and miraculous they are. You'd never know Kyle and I aren't first time parents, so much time we spend just staring at them with goofy smiles, pinching each other to make sure this is real.
But there's all the other stuff, too. There's been NICU time and too much time with Mack in the care of others and we don't understand all that is going on with him and his late-term preemie lungs, and too much time away from my girls, and I've developed a lovely case of post-delivery hypertension and my feet are STILL SWOLLEN. And as grateful as I am for all of the many, many encouraging words on being some sort of Shrek-footed Superwoman, I have to tell you, my body is just wrecked, y'all. I hurt.
And so there have been many tears. I feel like I'm constantly making a quiet scene. Hormone crashes and medical jargon and good old-fashioned exhaustion.
We're on Day 5.
I keep telling myself just once we can all get home, it will be so much better.
And I'm falling behind on everything else, but just once, I need to be skin-to-skin with this moment, heartbeat-to-heartbeat, surrendered to the big and the little and the just once-ness of it all.
