once a preemie, always a preemie

you'd think, a year and a half after jack was born, that i could read articles about preemies without tearing up. but i can't. once you've had a preemie, you're connected to other preemie parents in a way you can't imagine. it's like anything else...parents of kids who have cancer or parents who have lost a child or adults who've lost a spouse. when you've been through it, you have a deep well of compassion for others who've been through it. having a preemie made me a member of a club i never wanted to be a member of.

but jack is healthy and if you didn't know he was a preemie, you'd never know he was born six and a half weeks early and spent 5 weeks in the nicu. you wouldn't know he came home on a heart monitor and was on it for 2 months. and you wouldn't know that for the first month he was home, he was on three different medications to make sure he kept remembering to breathe.