Welcome to Holland

I recently came across this essay that really hit home with our entire premature birth and NICU experience. It was written in 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley, a writer for Sesame Street whose son was born with Down Syndrome. Although she wrote this to describe her own experience, which is obviously different from ours, it resonates with anyone whose pregnancy or childbirth turned out differently than expected. In fact, as Kingsley explained in a past interview, it is inspiring to anyone who has experienced a loss:

"It's about a lost dream, any lost dream. Any change from the original plan. It says that it's okay to continue to feel the pain of the loss; that it's legitimate pain. It says that you're entitled to be disappointed -- which then allows you to go on and enjoy what you did get."

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Welcome to Holland

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books 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 in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's 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 guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never 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 begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

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."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very, 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, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
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I can still remember with perfect clarity each milestone from the beginning of our pregnancy: seeing two lines on the home pregnancy test, our first ultrasound at 7 weeks when we saw two heartbeats, telling our family and friends about our news, and finding out we were having two little boys. Our lives were filled with such excitement and anticipation for the arrival of our first babies. We knew that carrying twins meant I might have to take it easy toward the end of the pregnancy, and maybe I'd deliver a few weeks early; but we never imagined that the boys would arrive before I even made it into the 3rd trimester. And although every day we acknowledge how extremely blessed we are for the miracles that are Max and Tyler, there are still moments when we miss those days of excitement - back when we still thought we were headed to Italy.

After reading this essay I said to Andy, "Maybe next time we'll go to Italy." And he responded, "I don't want to go to Italy." Because even though there are moments when we feel sad about the loss of a "normal" pregnancy, we absolutely without a doubt would never change this experience. Not only have we received the gift of two miracle babies, but we have learned so many things - about ourselves, life, faith, medicine, and the list goes on - and met so many people that we never would have come across had things gone as planned.

We know this is probably not the only time our lives will change course unexpectedly. But the next time we end up in Holland instead of Italy, at least we will already have the road maps.