Introduction

One month ago, my husband David and I welcomed our second child into the world, Oliver Patrick.  He weighed all of 1 lb, 5 oz, and was just shy of 12 inches long.  I was only 24 weeks pregnant.  We had just moved a thousand miles from home for David to start a new job in Golden, CO.  And we had just had the hardest, scariest week of our lives.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to write about this.  Even though I was on several baby sites, The Bump, WhattoExpect, I had never been able to write out my first birth story, the delivery of Nathaniel.  He was born with meconium aspiration and spent a week in the nursery.  I hadn't been able to hold him until the third day, or try to nurse until the fifth.  Writing it out had just been too hard.  Talking about it had been too hard, I was just too emotional.  I had no idea just how hard a birth could be.

Several of my friends had suggested that I needed to blog about this experience, I think mostly to update them when I had been unable to talk about it, and without flooding their facebook feeds.  I think I need to do this more for me, though, as a way to keep track, and remember.  I need to remember to put Oliver's travels through the NICU and through infancy and beyond in perspective, because it could have been so, so much worse.

Our first "family of four" picture

I'm going to try to put this into chronological order, but already my memory has faded.  Especially that first week when I was on bedrest in two different hospitals.  It was quite the journey and it's only just begun.