The Puppet Show

"She's been to the puppet show and she's seen the strings."- Cuba Gooding Jr. as Rod Tidwell in "Jerry Maguire"

I was just another pregnant lady among thousands in the 29 weeks leading up to Munchkin's birth.  I did the normal pregnant lady things, thought the normal pregnant lady thoughts, focused on my due date, and went about life totally naive to what was coming.

I became a different person at 29 weeks and 1 day into my pregnancy.  I was told I was very ill and they needed to take Munchkin out to save my life.  Everything changed in that moment.  My former self ceased to exist and four days later I became a preemie mom.  I became privvy to things I had no idea existed, or I knew they existed on some level but never really stopped to think about what it meant.

I learned things and saw things in the 11 weeks that followed that I never wanted to learn.  I  met people I never wanted meet.  I became aware of just how scary and dangerous pregnancy can be.  I learned just how many things can go wrong in a pregnancy even in the year 2010.  I was almost 27-years-old, healthy, and things like that just don't happen to regular people like me.  But they do.  It did.  And I met so many other moms who were just like me, like you, like anyone and we all ended up in this abyss with barely a moments notice.

So now I find myself in an odd place.  I'm not naive to pregnancy problems and how bad it can get.  I've been to the puppet show and I've seen the strings, if you will, and now we've decided to put ourselves in a situation where we could end up back in the NICU life.  It's a very strange place to be with many mixed emotions but, in a way, I feel better prepared if not a little sad I can't be blindly optomistic.

But optomistic none-the-less, because I'm pregnant. <3 p="">

Blind

“The baby was so beautiful to us, and I look back at the photos of him and it must have been jarring for other people to come in and see him, but to us he was so beautiful and perfect.” - Actor Chris Pratt talking about his son, Jack, who was born 9 weeks premature.

I instantly teared up when I read this story on People Magazine's website about Anna Faris and Chris Pratt's 9-week-premature son, Jack.  There aren't a lot of mainstream stories about preemies and even less that focus on the positive.

This story hit me right in the heart because his sentiments are right on and so well stated.  It used to bother me so much when the first thing people would say about G-man is how tiny and frail he looked.  I even wrote a blog post about it because it irked me so much.  It wasn't my most eloquent post but it was something that really frustrated me to the point I would snap at people who said that all the time.

And now Chris Pratt has gone and perfectly put why this bothered me so much; because I was blind to how other people perceived him.  When family and friends saw G-man's picture posted to my Facebook page, some commented on how tiny and frail he looked, how all those tubes and machines were scary, how they couldn't believe something so small could function.

When I looked at those same pictures I was blind to his frailty, blind to how scary it was that he was literally skin and bones. But I wasn't oblivious, I just saw something different.

I saw my pride and joy, a piece of my own heart outside my body, my beautifully perfect boy; and this perfect boy just so happened to be small and hooked up to machines.  He was my perfect baby boy first and a tiny preemie second.