a New mom...Congratulations Jenny!

This is an email to me from my good friend Jenny, who just delivered (yes a little bit preemie) a healthy baby girl.

For my LONG time blog readers, Jenny is Ethyn's mom. Ethyn was Kaitlyn's "twin" in the NICU. Ethyn lost his twin just as Kaitlyn lost her twin. Jenny and I enjoyed calling each others babies their twin. Ethyn was a very sick little guy (born at 24 weeks) and is doing really well now, but he has eating issues and is developmentally delayed (like Katilyn). Ethyn was in the NICU for over 5 months, and came home the day after Katilyn did. The NICU let us choose our NICU isolettes so we could be next to one antoher, as we both spent a LOT of time at the NICU for those many long months.

Great news! Jenny just had a beautiful baby girl, Mychelle. Here is her note to me:

Things are going wonderfully on the homefront. Mychelle is an awesome sleeping, eating, pooping machine. I have to tell you it's just so wonderful to be able to breastfeed her. I was pretty stressed initially because I couldn't tell how much she was taking in or if she was gaining weight (typical preemie mom fears about weight gain), but after her one week appointment where we found out that she was actually above her birth weight I was able to just go with the flow.

Having a full-term baby, which I consider Mychelle to be even though she is technically a preemie, is just so, so, so much easier. Sure I'm sleep deprived because I'm nursing Mychelle on demand which is typically every hour and a half, but I love the fact that she's actually demanding food. And sleep deprivation due to nursing is nothing compared to what we went through at the NICU or even afterwards.

Right now, Ethyn is still the challenge given his feeding (which is better) and his schedule.

Oh Liz, I want so much for you to experience the joys of having a full term baby. We definitely don't love our babies less, but we did miss out on the typical motherhood experience.