Sort of a moment...

I can remember vividly the first time I referred to Scarlett as "my daughter." It might not seem like such a momentous occasion to some, but for me it was sort of a moment.

She was about a week old, and it was early evening on a Tuesday. Sam hadn't been feeling well since we left the hospital, we were there from early Monday morning (like 2am early when we arrived to get started with the induction) to Thursday morning, Thanksgiving Day. Our doc took pity on us and let us go home a day early to be able to enjoy the holiday outside of the sterile (or not so sterile) confinement of the hospital. Poor Sam had been sleeping on a lumpy cot for 4 nights, I was still moving slower than a turtle after the c-section and we longed to get our baby home. So on that Thanksgiving Day, we had a lot to be thankful for as we packed all of our stuff into the car, and while we were two when we arrived at Cedars, we were leaving as three, with our sweet sleepy gal all snug in her infant seat.

After a great Thanksgiving meal with my parents, we thought just being home would be a cure all. But even after a few (albeit sleepless) nights in our own bed, Sam still wasn't feeling great. We thought he was coming down with a cold maybe, so he kept his distance from our Scarlett, and just tried to kick it with vitamins and rest. By Monday, he was still feeling pretty lousy, so off to the doctor he went. And then on Tuesday, early evening, he got the call.

I remember looking at him as he was on the phone, somewhat distracted trying to feed or change Scarlett, hearing my mom cooking dinner in the kitchen, and then it got quiet, as he ended his call and looked at me and said: I have the swine flu. At that moment, I almost had a complete meltdown. Going straight into new mommy mode, I immediately called the pediatricians office and as the nurse picked up, I said, "Hi, my daughter is a patient of the doctor, and my husband was just diagnosed with swine flu, what the heck are we going to do!?" And saying that word out loud, in that parental protective context, well it sort of took the sting out for that one brief second. I felt like a mother, I felt like we were parents.

Sam had to go to a hotel for 5 days while he took tamiflu and recovered, because we just could not chance Scarlett, at a week old catching the swine flu. It was heartbreaking to say the least. Poor Sam, missing those days with his new daughter, it was so sad. So yeah, it sucked, and it was hard, on everyone, but we can sort of laugh about it now, and that makes it okay :)