Written October 31, 2012 11:17am

I have a routine.

For those of you who know me well, you know that I do well when there is a schedule. I like order. Not that I can’t handle chaos – I work with 15 and 16 year old’s everyday so that is part of the job description – but I like there to be a purpose to abandoning my routine. Can you tell that I’m a type A personality?

Well, I love my schedule that I have created now. It is my one sense of control in life that has given me lots of shocks in the past few weeks. I start the day at 5:30 and pump, shower, feed the dog, eat breakfast watching the morning news, get ready, and pull everything together to go to the NICU.

This is not a complicated schedule. It’s pretty simple. It actually looks very similar to my schedule before Ellen. I’m a creature of habit.

So this morning when Mike asked if I could wake him up after I pump so he could take a shower, I might of had a bit of a personal crisis….

Mentally I know that this shake up to the routine is really not a big deal. And I know that Mike has been wonderful and is working hard to support me and take care of things at work. While it’s not a lot – those extra fifteen minutes of extra sleep are really nice for him.

However, emotionally I did not fare so well today. As much as I tried to convince myself that it really is not a big deal (I’m mean really – eating breakfast before my shower is not an earth shattering change), this small change started a downward spiral that I could not control.

Luckily, Mike is wonderful and could tell that this change was not okay with me as much as I wanted it to be okay. He gladly took his shower after my shower. What a guy, huh? 🙂

All of this is to say that not having Ellen at home is hard. And it gets harder every day. As much as I want to be level headed and strong, there are moments every day that it hits in just how hard it is to be a mom and not have your child with you all the time. It’s hard to figure out what a “good” mom looks like in this situation. I want to be with her all the time, but it is hard to spend that much time in the NICU. It’s hard to watch Ellen’s neighbors change everyday because they get to go home. It’s hard to watch other babies struggle with more severe issues than Ellen. The range of grief and gratitude on a daily basis can be exhausting.

But life continues on. And once I get a bit more perspective and am allowed to be a bit emotional, I pull myself together and keep going with my routine.

Ellen’s routine is pretty strict as well. Every three hours she gets her vitals checked, diaper changed and fed. Every other time she is either tube fed of breast/bottle fed.

This morning routine went fantastic – which was exactly what I needed. She did great feeding! I think she probably could have even had a little bit more than she did. She is continuing to gain weight and get cranky before feedings. This is a good sign. It means that she wants to eat and will actually wake up for it. Who would ever think that I would be grateful for a fussy baby? (And as I write those words, I do realize those could be words I choke on later – but there are times of happiness and times of fussiness if I can channel Dickens.)

That’s all for now. I know there was more about me than about Ellen, but I guess that is the way it goes sometimes.