last night was slightly surreal.

let me lay out the scenario and players.

i was contacted last june by a lady in hong kong carrying twins who was on bedrest due to risk of PTL. we have a mutual friend, (more hers than mine, this lady was just an angel to me once when i was in despair) who had suggested she contact me regarding care at the queen mary hospital where she would have her babies.

we emailed back and forth, and in july she had her twin boys at 28 weeks. (THE BOYS ARE HERE! declared her husband’s email.)

while she was living the NICU groundhog day, she met and made friends with several other POP’s (parents of preemies) with children in the NICU.

and last night, she invited us all to dinner.

magnificent charles and i arrived late, trouble parking….and ironically enough we ended up parking at the hospital which houses our IVF clinic. we hadn’t been there since our transfer, back in good old september 2003.

we walk into their house, which is just the sort of house we love, filled with animals, pictures of animals, and family, happy events and love.

after saying hello to our hosts, we met the other NICU parents.

how was it surreal, tess.

umm, not sure. maybe surreal isn’t the best word, but i don’t have the time to find a better one. i have to go grocery shopping with the triplets in a few minutes.

i just knew these people. i knew where their mind was taking them when they would get slightly cloudy eyes during a conversation, as they would visibly shake their head after a memory, or brightly smile after a recollection.

there was plenty of laughter, you can’t be in this flat and not laugh. and great food as well. and we didn’t always talk about premature babies. lots about people, the wonderful city we live in, and children. but it was so relaxing to be among people who understand. that when they ask how your child is, and you shrug and say, "well you know"…they do know what you are saying is, "so far so good, but this whole brain business has yet to be resolved."

these folk had each other for support during their children’s NICU stays. magnificent and i want to provide a similar network for other parents. we are in the stages of putting together a PoP (parents of preemies??) group, and will have 24 hour contact numbers where bewildered parents with preemie children sporting tubes down their throats and skin hanging off their precious little limbs can call. for listening, advice, support. the involved parents can tell them: you’re not alone.

last night we weren’t alone. we were talking about the past, laughing at our inability to guess the future, and very, very happy. and then we came home and magnificent charles got four hours of sleep before jasper woke him up yelping pathetically with hunger.