The Next Chapter

This morning, I came home from work at my job in the NICU for the last time. I have been thinking for a while about the future of our family and where my purpose is managing work and stuff at home. I decided that it was time to leave my job at the hospital and stay home with my growing family to be a full time mom. I did shed a few tears on my drive home from work this morning. While I seem to have been somewhat professionally confused in recent years, working in different areas and trying to find a good fit, the NICU has been a stable presence for the last seven years. I had moments of feeling so challenged at that job, doing things I never imagined. When I graduated from nursing school, I wanted to be a flight nurse but I never thought it would happen. I didn't ever plan or even wish to work  with babies when I first started out and yet I had a successful career of doing just that for 10 years. I even spent some of that time as a flight nurse for the babies...long after I thought that dream had died. It's all been very cool, and I leave with great memories:

--being new to the job and feeling like a total dope who didn't know a thing about what I was doing

--our brand new unit and the first days of caring for babies in private rooms

--when I got married and my friends from work gave me a wedding shower and came to our wedding

--going out for transports in the ambulance and flights, and attending all those C-sections 

--making pancakes in the employee lounge in the early morning

--many, many kids who spent time there---some home with families and some to heaven--some of the most memorable: Payton, Theresa, Alla, Gavin, Brock, Tanner

--spending my first Christmas there, alone in the back room with baby Maria (anyone from work reading this will understand how that was not an ideal Christmas!)

--watching Napoleon Dynamite in the middle of the night

--working all those nights with a fun crew of people who made it easier to be there 

--all of the awful, mean, embarrassing, exhausting, but also challenging, fulfilling, rewarding, proud, wonderful moments

Ok, so a few tears are back again. It's ok, it was a significant place and I had to give it a little tribute.

So now, it's on to the next chapter--potentially even more scary--being a full time mother to two Chinese boys, one here, and one on the way. Yikes! But, of course I mean that in a good way....