i am a mom of two premies. my oldest son was born at 33 weeks, and my second was born at 28 weeks. i know the sadness of not being able to bring your baby home when you leave the hospital i did it twice.  my youngest was the sickest he was 2 lbs. 14 oz. and 15 1/2 inches when he was born.  he had to have two blood tranfusions because of him being anemic. he could not produce his own blood. he was born on Nov. 23 1998, and on Dec 31, 1999 he had finally hit 4 lbs. and when he came home on his due date of feb.8 he was 6lbs 8oz. and a year old he was only over 17 lbs. and even know at 13 he only weighs 92 lbs and is  4ft 10 1/2 inches.  When he came home he was on a heart monitor, and o2 every feeding and he was also on 3 different meds and only drank 1 1/2 ozs with cereal since he had acicd reflex docs oked it.  my other son was 20 months old when he came home. it was hard for me. i know what you mean about blocking stuff out becasue i really dont remeber to much of the time he was in the hospital 

I wrote 2 blogs on here about preemies and NICU. I had a 9 month NICU stay and we even had to transfer hospitals once.  Good to hear he's doing well now.  My daughter is 18 months and still is pretty far behind due to coming home on oxygen. 
By the way, your daughter was born on the exact date my husband and I got married.. 

my sister had my niece early in the 20-week range (don't remember quite what week) and she was born at only 1 lb 1 oz and 11 inches long. i think she was out of the NICU within 4-5 months though, and she's doing pretty well now... already in third grade! she has some attention problems and a weak eye but she's the most loving kiddo you'll ever meet. love the little miracle girl :)

I was a premie and we all are definitely miracles to the world. I didn't have many complications, just had to stay in the hospital for a while. My mom and dad had to watch me to make sure I didn't stop breathing because my lungs could have failed but I stayed strong and got through it. I'm not sure if you ever read this but make sure as he get's older into his adulthood that he get's his heart and lungs checked out frequently. I've done a lot of research on premies and they say that we have more chances of having heart and lung problems as we get older. And learning may be a problem, but since your a loving mother he should do just fine :) I was a grade level behind in reading for a while but I caught up thanks to my awesome grandma. :)