Two Years Ago Today...

We still lived in blissful ignorance of micropreemie parenthood.

At this hour, on this day, in 2006, Sharon was having back pain and was feeling very uncomfortable. She had been for a couple of days, and she was looking (to me, at least) to be carrying way low and way too big given that she was all of 23 weeks pregnant. She looked kind of similar to photos of 40-week pregnant women (in one of the annoying pregnancy books that we've now purged from our collection). Sheesh, she hadn't yet reached her third trimester! Still, what did we know? Sharon was, after all, carrying twins and everyone out there said that she would run big.

We've learned a lot since then: we've learned that gut instincts that something is wrong are usually right. We've learned not to overlook anything at all when it comes to pregnancy and parenting. And we've learned that IVF alone, regardless of how many embryos or blastocysts you put back in and how many take, poses a major threat of prematurity and low birth weight.

We did not know all of this two years ago, but our guts told us something was wrong. Thankfully we made it to Pennsylvania Hospital in time and thankfully the OBs took Sharon's symptoms seriously enough.

Two years ago today we bought our girls four days and 37 minute and two rounds of steroids (betamethasone). At 23 weeks, each day matters...heck, each hour matters. That wasn't enough to help Olivia overcome the trauma of being born 16 weeks and 3 days too soon, but Hallie, miraculously, managed not only to pull through but to do so in ways that we find astounding,

Two years ago and five hours from now today, our lives changed forever. There is no going back to where we were.