Happy "Woulda Shoulda" 1st Birthday Maryam

Here is a photo of Maryam her Happy "woulda shoulda" birthday presents. The dress is from Momom and Popop.

This is Maryam pretending to drink Diet Dr. Pepper. Actually she was just playing with the cold can. She likes to put her hands on the cold can and then take them off again. She does this over and over and over and over again.

Here is Maryam standing up using her Karaoke toy thingy. She just pulled herself up. She's getting SOOOOO BIG!

Like I said yesterday, today has been full of mixed emotions. I keep thinking "what could have been." And, "what's wrong with my body that I couldn't do what millions of women do everyday?" Of course, I thought things like, "If Maryam were born 'on time' she would be a totally different baby than she is today, and there is no way I'd trade her for anything or anyone in the whole wide world." So, yeah, my feelings have been pretty mixed.
When Maryam was first born we were flooded with statistics by doctors and nurses of what her chances of "making it" were. Then there were the odds of "something being wrong with her." Of course the doctors and nurses didn't say it quite like that, but that's what we heard. They said words like Cerebral Palsy, brain hemorrhages, heart mummers, oscillators, high frequency ventilators, ultra sounds, X-rays, Surfactant, PDA ligation, sepsis, blood transfusions, lipids, developmental delays...etc. It felt like everyday there was a new word added to our vocabulary. Everyday I was reading a hand out left by Maryam's isolette or reading something out of a medical journal or my handy dandy book The Premature Baby Book by Dr. Sears.
Everyday we'd ask how much she'd taken orally? How much was gavaged? Did she gain weight? How much? Did she spit up a lot? Did she pull her NG tube out again? But the one question we wanted to ask everyday but were afraid to was; When does she finally get to come home? We were told that babies born "that early" don't tend to go home much before their due dates. OK, that means 15 weeks, we can handle that, I think. Well, those 15 weeks came and went. Maryam's due date was celebrated in the NICU. 103 days after she was born, she was still in the same place and we were still wondering, when will Maryam get to go home? We started joking that the NICU was the only home she's ever known, so really, she was home. So we changed our question to; when does Maryam get to go to her new home? 39 days after her due date, 142 days after she was born, Maryam finally got to move into her new home.
Today Maryam is 12 months adjusted! She's finally 1 year old adjusted! I'm so proud of her. She's come a long way in that year, she's done a lot of hard work to get where she is. Sure, she came into this world almost 4 months earlier than she "shoulda" but I wouldn't change her birthday for anything, not even her "woulda shoulda" birthday.

This was our little miracle on this day last year. Happy "woulda shoulda" birthday Maryam, we love you.