a Visit back to the NICU

Today, Kendall & I met Ashley for lunch at the place where our family of 3 this started 1 year ago (tomorrow) ... the Baylor Regional Medical Center of Grapevine ... in the NICU!

For the past year, I'd always planned on going back to the NICU for a visit on Kendall's 1st birthday ... I remember, as I watched our sweet baby girl lying in her isolate, I would dream and think about a lot of things ... happy things ... about us one day being able to bring her home with us ... or what she'd be like and doing when she was 6 months old ... or what we'd be doing for her 1st birthday party ... lots of happy and hopeful thoughts and plans, really ... and coming back to the NICU to visit all the wonderful doctors and nurses that took great care of our sweet Kendall when we could do nothing for her ourselves, was one of my daydreams ... and we got to do that today! (Her birthday is on a Saturday this year and we will be in Abilene to celebrate it with my family ... more about that on a future post! ... so we picked today, instead.)

We'd seen lots of the NICU nurses and doctors at the 1st annual Baylor Grapevine NICU Reunion in October, but that had been several months ago, so we were really looking forward to seeing them again! Everyone was so happy & complimentary to us ... it was so nice to see them again ... and thank them for all their love & care that they gave Kendall and us as her parents. When you are in the NICU for 8 weeks ... and you're in a difficult & stressful situation ... you really get to know each other pretty well ... so just one day not seeing them every day, multiple times a day, is a bit weird to get used to (not that we wanted to stay in the NICU any longer than we did) ... so it was great to come visit!

We got to visit with several of Kendall's nurses and her Doctor, but only got a picture of a few of them ...

Nurse Erin ... she is such a sweetie and loves to love on Kendall!

Nurse Sarah ... she & her family go to our church and we've seen them a few times lately, which has been really fun ... she had her 2nd boy late December.

Dr. Kapplar ... Kendall's Neonatal Specialist ... We. LOVE. Dr. Kapplar! She came to visit me while I was in anti-pardom (laying in my hospital bed trying not to have to deliver) ... she was so helpful in answering my many questions and giving me the reality & hope of the situation we were in ... she was so sweet, compassionate, very genuine and informal and that really allowed me to build trust in her ... I really appreciate her! Then, once we had Kendall in the NICU she was her doctor, so she was instrumental in her growth & development ... we thank God for Dr. Kapplar! She is very personable, easy to talk to, easy to understand (which can be wonderful with all the crazy medical speak that goes on!), is quick on her feet and so caring. She was so excited to see Kendall again today and spent quite a bit of time holding her, loving on her & gave us a very positive assessment of her (it's always great to get positive feedback from a medical professional!). You can tell she really loves her patients!

Leah is the NICU receptionist & is so sweet and helpful to all the families who have a baby in the NICU!

After visiting the NICU, we went to the hospital's cafeteria (which, as crazy as this probably sounds, we've craved from time to time over these past 10 months!) We ate in the cafeteria many, many times during our 2 months in the NICU and hadn't been back since so we thought it was appropriate for us to eat there today! I'm glad that we did ... Ashley had to go back to the office after he got his food, but Kendall & I stayed and ate there (I love that she can eat little finger foods now ... it makes things soooo much easier when we are out & about!) and we saw several people that we knew. It was nice catching up with Meagan, the education coordinator, who came by my room in anti-pardom several times to talk & see how I was doing, and visited us & Kendall once we'd given birth. We also got to talk with the NICU's social worker, Jabina, who had just started that job a week or 2 after we arrived in the NICU.

After lunch, Kendall & I ran errands, came home for her next feeding & a nap ... and sometime in between all of that, we took more pictures ... the day before our sweet baby girl turns 1!

(Just a side note here, but the baby doll that Kendall is holding/playing with in some of these pictures is the baby doll we gave her at Christmas ... she wasn't interested in it in December (as I figured, but I wanted to get her a little baby anyway) ... I was trying to find a baby that was about the size she was when she was born ... which I've found to be pretty much an impossible task, but this one is pretty close. I pulled it out of her closet this week and showed it to her and her face lit up ... and she immediately picked it up and put it in her lap ... I like to think that she was holding her & taking care of her like a mommy would ... maybe a little motherly-instinct there? I thought it was really cute that she did this all on her own. She's also been seen pulling the doll by her arm over to her as she is crawling around, leaning over the doll & kissing (okay, really, it's biting/teething her face, but I think she's kissing her, not trying to bite off) her face, & clapping with the doll. This baby doll is wearing one of Kendall's very first NICU preemie outfits that she wore when she was finally allowed to start wearing clothing. I've added a picture of Kendall in the NICU wearing this same pink dress ... or as Ashley liked to refer to it "her Jedi robe" ... ha!)

In pictures it's really hard to tell her true size, but seeing her in this outfit and then seeing the outfit on the baby doll in the pictures below kind of helps ... Kendall was 3 weeks old in this NICU picture.

Sweet, Sweet Kendall Grace ... You have changed our lives forever!