New Year's Eve was the day Eva was discharged to home nursing from the Children's.
I am hungering for this Christmas. I think I need it to heal my heart.
Poor Eva spent her first Christmas in intensive care and while she'll never remember it, it's one I'll never forget for all the wrong reasons. There was a ripple effect. The boys spent Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa and while I'm glad they were surrounded by loving family, I didn't realise how much I missed spending Christmas with them until I updated their baby books and for their 2nd Christmas section it asks, "What did they eat for dinner?" I have no idea. I have no idea what they did all day, let alone what they ate.
The Christmas before (2009) I was very pregnant with Eva, having bouts of regular contractions and generally over everything. I forgot to even take photos of the day.
The Christmas before that (2008) was our last without the boys. Baker Bob spent it in Tassie and I spent Christmas day swollen beyond all recognition and navigating a 24hr urine collection. The days prior and after were spent in Pregnancy Day Care, waiting for the time bomb that was my stomach (or precarious blood pressure) to explode and make something happen.
You would have thought that this would have dampened my enthusiasm for Christmas but it hasn't. I have always been an "I love Christmas" kind of girl but the last few have not only changed my view to that of a mother, it has also made me really understand the true essence of Christmas.
Last Christmas I watched some amazing people save my daughters life. I met people who, despite the fact we were strangers and essentially "a job", took such heartfelt care of my daughter that I wish I could remember all their names and thank them individually. And mostly I saw my daughter fight to come back to us from the brink of something I didn't, and don't, want to contemplate. I saw her emerge almost unscathed. I wondered were she got her strength from, and knew that I would not have her strength if she stayed in that dark place.
I witnessed a Christmas miracle and she lives and laughs in front of me everyday.
For that I will be eternally grateful.
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