She was amazed to consider how quickly the abnormal had become the usual. Four months ago she had been five months pregnant with their much desired second child. Theirs had been such an ordinary life, but one she loved. Mornings were busy getting their three year old, Diana, off to daycare, her husband off to his graduate school research and her off to work at the office. By the time she reached her desk, relieved to be sitting once more, her little one would wake up and start his daily romp around her abdomen. That always brought a smile to her lips, confirming that all was well with him. Or was it her? Diana was sure it would be a boy, but no one else knew. Evenings and weekends revolved around family, with meals, laundry, and lots of stories and hugs.

Then one morning she awoke to a small show of blood and nothing had been normal again.

Hospitals, ultrasounds, drugs designed to stop her premature labor which began in earnest 36 hours later. Signs of hope for the pregnancy continuing rose briefly, then were dashed rapidly and replaced with the emergency helicopter ride to the nearest hospital with the level three newborn intensive care unit. The sun blinded her during the flight on the unusually hot late May day in eastern Washington State. She became nauseated from the smell of the aviation fuel or was it the fear for her baby? The transport nurse did her best to convey competence and reassurance with touch and the compassion broadcast through her gentle blue eyes. There was a brief reunion with her husband at the helipad on the hospital roof; the helicopter had been delayed in arriving allowing him to drive the seventy-five miles faster than she flew. New doctors and nurses hurried around them. A new drug was administered but it needed thirty minutes to work. Before those thirty minutes had passed, a new life cried out, “I’m here.”

So incredibly tiny he was, yet perfectly formed down to fingernails and eyelashes. His entire foot filled no more space than the first two joints of her smallest finger. A miracle in a minute package.

Months would pass before she heard his voice again or saw his face free of bandages, electrodes and tubes. During those months she learned the rhythms of the unit’s routine: when to meet the doctors, which nurses would allow her to read the chart even after the hospital administrator had caught her and banned parental chart reading. She struggled through late night surgeries when the darkness added to the terrifying specter of potential bad news and other nights spent curled up on waiting room couches praying for hope to dawn along with the new day. For all those months her days were tethered to the electric breast pump; three times each day she pumped more gallons of perfect nutrition than he would ever need.

Only through the grace of the love and availability of her mother and mother-in-law who played tag as they came to help with Diana was she able to bear the burdens of those days. She was torn between her children, each one needing her as she needed them, yet they were separated by 75 miles.

But for now, this one moment, she was content to slip onto the stool beside his isolette and to marvel at her perfect little boy. A robust four pounds, his weight had more than doubled since his birth. His eyes opened and he smiled as she reached out to rub his leg and her wordless hum burst out in quiet song.

Her world, their world, would never be the same. So much had changed in those few months. More change would come as they fought their way through the maze of a new world with a special child. But for this moment she was at peace.