An emotional return

This morning Nancy and I took Theresa down to St. Joseph's Hospital here in Hamilton for an allergy test. While we were there, we took the opportunity to go to the maternity ward and the level 2 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) where Theresa spent just over seven weeks of her life after leaving McMaster University Medical Centre (MUMC), where she was born 14 weeks early. Although there is construction taking place and a number of departments have been moved, the NICU is still in the same place. We walked down the hall until we were standing right outside the door and could see inside.

Day after day in late 1998 and early 1999 we would enter through this door, take off our overcoats, scrub our hands and arms, and put on smocks over our street clothes. Then we would enter the NICU proper where we would find Theresa's incubator (or isolette, as they called them there) amongst several others in the room. For most of the time she was there, our Theresa was the smallest of the babies -- and certainly the one born the earliest. Her first slightly more than three weeks had been spent at the level 3 NICU at MUMC. Transfer to St. Joe's meant she was out of danger and being "fattened up" to go home. (In fact, the people at MUMC referred to the St. Joe's NICU as the "fat farm.")

Standing outside the door to the NICU this morning brought tears to my eyes. I probably would have got even more choked up if it had not been for Theresa herself, who was blithely unmoved by the experience and continued to chatter away about the pumpkin decorations on the door itself, the flowers at the maternity ward desk, the Anne Geddes babies on the walls, &c., &c. She had other things on her mind, and her own unusual beginnings have yet to make an impression on her. That's probably as it should be now. And it was enough to keep Daddy from getting too emotional.

Theresa turns 5 a week from monday.