Holland

I just talked to the perinatologist and everything is stable for now. My blood pressures have been stable on labetolol, and although my urine test had double the protein from last week, it still is on the mild side. Because this mild preeclampsia could blossom to severe preeclampsia at any time, I am still stuck here until I deliver.

As I sat in my room last night and listened to the newborn baby cry in the room adjacent to mine, I couldn't help but feel a little sad that I most likely will not be able to have that experience...my daughter will probably head straight to the NICU when she is born. But then I remembered what I read the other night on a cute little patient's blog. All I could think of was applying it to mine and Trav's situation now. Sometimes in our lives we are blindsided by unforseen circumstances...and although they may be different that what we thought, they might bring a whole new set of blessings. Enjoy this little story.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND-By Emily Pearl Kingsley
"When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans...The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?" you say, "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm suppose to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there has been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So, you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around and you bring to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips and Holland even has Rembrandt's. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." The pain of that will never, ever go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special , lovely things about Holland."