Draw Comfort From Your Surroundings

I know I just posted last night, but it was a rather sad post about the loss of a friend and I want to get back to talking about everything I am learning from Hailey. One of the tiny lessons she bestowed upon me is that no matter what, we can always draw comfort from our surroundings. As a military spouse, this is a particularly important concept to embrace because we move around the country so frequently. We constantly have to make new friends, learn our way around new streets and towns, try to retrofit our furnishings into new spaces, and make a house a home when often it is a rental or we are living on post and aren't allowed to paint the walls.

We are luckier than most with babies in the NICU because we got to bring Hailey home for a period of time. We had just about four weeks with her at home with us, living as a normal family of four and thinking things were all wonderful. But then things headed south and Hailey spent the remainder of her almost four months on earth fighting for her life in the hospital. Her days and nights were often filled with discomfort. I held her as much as possible and tried to push all of my hopes for comfort and healing out of my body and into hers. I thought if I could just love her enough, she could maybe get better. And boy, did she fight. She fought her way back from so many bad turns. And I think she partly derived the strength to do so from her surroundings. From all of us who held her, but even just from appreciating her bed and her room.

From birth, Hailey was always a cuddler. I know most babies are snuggly or really, how much can they protest being held when they are so young and dependent on us? But I'd already had a son and in comparing my daughter to him, I knew she was different. She would fold herself into you, revel in your embrace, and would always try to hold on to you with her dainty and delicate little hands. If she couldn't hold on to yours, she would fold her own hands over each other like the precious little lady she was. I have numerous photos on my phone of her clasping on to us. She knew how to give and receive love and draw strength from others when she needed to.

Hailey also understood how to embrace her surroundings. When there wasn't a person close enough to hold, she would grab on to the sides of her crib or would even hold on to her medical tubes just to try to hold something. It broke my heart that she was searching so hard for comfort, but I am thankful she found it, no matter the means.

So often in life, we buck up against our surroundings when they aren't to our liking. Change is hard. New places are hard, our jobs can be hard at times, we can have bosses and coworkers or neighbors we dislike. But I know if Hailey can find comfort holding her myriad of medical tubes in the NICU, then I will be damned if I can't always find the good in my own surroundings.

At the very end of her life, when Hailey was in distress from being intubated, she needed increasing amounts of sedatives and pain killers to remain calm and comfortable. But for the last two days before we let her go, when family and friends came in from far and wide to all meet her, hold her and be with her, the nurses were amazed at the dip in sedation she required. It was as if all of our love sustained her and gave her a comfort even better than the medicine could.

Hailey has shown me how to appreciate the smallest things. Grab on to the medical tubes if that is the only comfort you can find to get yourself through. Because better will come. As the old saying goes, "this to shall pass." And you can take the hard way there, fighting everything around you, or you can help ease your own suffering. Don't let commotion distract you --- be kind to yourself and never let go of what matters. With love.