2011

We have settled into a nice little routine. I visit every two hours to do your ‘cares’, (which just means I change your nappy really and feed you through a tube), then I fall asleep on the chair next to you expressing. After about half an hour a nurse wakes me up and sends me downstairs where I nap for a while before coming up again. I want to breathe you in every chance I get until Saturday, when I leave. Two more days.

Lachie came in today – a whole new set of doctors and nurses for him to enchant. There are no balloons in the NICU, so they blow up rubber gloves for him and draw faces on them. He goes and plays with the trucks in the parent’s room with Grandad and Ma and Dad and I sit and stare at you. I think we are all too exhausted to talk.

The first thing Lachie said when he saw you was “Look Mum, a baby!”

“Yes. That’s your sister, Lucy.”

“Oh. Oooooooh, so many buttons!”

He was quickly ushered away from your finely tuned humidicrib, but rest assured, in his own way he is excited about your arrival.

And you’re here. I keep telling myself to remind me. All those weeks in here just you and I and four very imposing walls and now we are both free. I am walking around – went outside for the first time today, just for a quick breath of air. I felt a tingle on my arm as the breeze blew, and felt alive and connected to the world again.

And you are out here where you so desperately wanted to be. Exactly 3 months to the day early, and on Albert’s birthday to boot. You are completely beautiful and we are all besotted with you. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you inside me longer – but thankful you have the spirit of a thousand wild horses. It will do you good in this place to have some spunk. The voice tells me you’ll need it. But also, that you’ll be okay. So far, there is no reason to doubt him.

2014

Tonight you just would not sleep. We tried everything. It seems as you get older you need less and less sleep. It’s an inconvenience you care very little for, and you are fond of telling me you just slept last night and will do it again tomorrow. Why do you need to do it today?

But neither your father nor I, (usually resigned to being bad cop), could resist you tonight. You were so incorrigible in your constant visits to us we forgot our hunger and pushed back our dinner just to spend a few extra minutes giving you a cuddle. I will need to be stronger to keep you inline. Once you decide on a course of action I am generally powerless to change your course.

March 18