Let me be honest, the title of this post is a bit misleading. What I show you next are actually a few things I LOVE!

First up, this cute little cloth heart. When Nellie-Anne was first admitted into the NICU they gave me a cloth heart and gave her one. They told me to wear it in my bra throughout the day and then every few days I could switch it out with the one she has on her bed with her. That way she has one that smells like me and I have one that smells like her.

It makes me feel like I always have a part of her with me.

Next are these cute little diapers they have on her. She’s still so little that even the ‘preemie’ sized diapers are too big for her. You can see how far below her little bottom it sits. We never in a million years thought we would need diapers smaller than size 1. Now, we’re having to consider buying preemie & newborn sized diapers.

Finally, and this is my absolute favorite thing lately, is watching him watch her. When he’s with her all I can think about is how amazing he’ll be as her daddy. Right now, it’s hard for us to be in her room for too long. We can’t feed her because she isn’t on a feeding protocol, we can’t hold her because she’s too ‘hooked up’, and we can’t change her for the same reason; they are really cautious right now with how much she’s being moved around. What we can do is a solid touch, so we do for as long as we want.

We usually stay for about 30 minutes. However, I can always tell he’s not quite ready to leave her. He’ll stand there and stare at her while she drools and stretches. And I think it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. It makes my heart happy to see that I’ve married someone who is going to love his daughter more than anything else in this world.

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*BONUS FAVORITE THING*: realizing that self-care is not considering being selfish. I struggled for a few days with deciding to do things for me. But yesterday I went and got my hair done and it was amazing. Tomorrow I have an appointment to get my nails done. I didn’t think that it was appropriate for me to do things like this while we’re in this situation, but it is okay and now I know how important it is.

Here are before and after photos of my hair. I’m back to purple and I’M IN LOVE!