Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Work I Go...

I realized today that it has been quite sometime since my last post. Some of that is because Ty is getting older and the smothering first-time mom in me has relaxed a bit. It seems as he gets older, there aren't as many new things to capture (although he continues to amaze me everyday).

After a visit to Riley Hospital with my family to serve a meal at the Ronald McDonald House, I made the decision to go back to work. It was definitely a "God Thing". Anyone who knows me pretty well knew that I didn't think I'd go back to the NICU anytime soon. As a matter of fact, on many occasions I recall myself saying I wanted to "get away from kids" IF I went back to work. But on the day we visited Riley Hospital, I was able to talk to a family whose baby had been in the NICU for over 7 months. Something just sparked in me. Part of it was the great feeling of being able to use the knowledge base I had stored away for a couple of years. The other part was this new compassion and understanding I had for those parents as a mom who experienced having a sick child myself. I felt God saying to me that it was time and He had some work for me to do.

I'm excited about it and nervous at the same time. I think about Riley every time I walk past the room he was delivered in (and the room his heartbeated last in). I haven't worked up the nerve to go in that room yet. I'm not sure how therapeutic it would be. It's not scary or sad, it's just that behind that door was the life that left me (my life as I once knew it). Now on the other side of that life, and door, is a new amazingly difficult to explain Me.

Wow...didn't plan to get that deep in this post. ANYWAY...so I started back to work this week. On my first day of orientation, I saw a familiar face. I couldn't place where I knew her. As the day went on, I began to put the pieces together. And as I was driving home, it dawned on me...it was Jessica, the nurse who stood by my side and held our hands as we enjoyed the last minutes of our time with Riley. She was my delivery nurse. A week or so after Riley was born, Jessica moved to Colorado so I never had the chance to tell her how much she meant to me. I never dreamed I would see her again.

So here I am, my first day back to work. Nervous, excited, feeling a bit uneasy, and God placed her there. What are the odds? She and her fiance decided to move back home to Indiana to be close to family as they begin to start a family of their own (sound familiar?). It's just so wild. We enjoyed lunch together today and was able to talk about my delivery with Riley. Surprisingly my eyes stayed dry, but she teared up multiple times. It's nice to see that Riley's life is still remembered and impacted people in ways I'll never know.