Love, Laura
“Dear NICU Mama, In moments of fear, I hope you know you can do this because even in your broken, grieving state, there are moments of joy. When you feel you won’t survive another eye exam, another surgery, or another setback, grasp for joy.
No matter how bad things get, you will relish being that baby’s mama. You may hold your breath and feel your heart pounding while you wait for what happens next, but you’ve always taken that next breath—if not for yourself, for that sweet baby.
As permanent as this feels, one day you will sit at the kitchen counter feeding your toddler, and the NICU will be a memory. You will stand in wonder of your child, and you will stand in support of your sisters—mothers like us who thought we wouldn’t survive the heartache, but did.
You can do this because you are not alone. We’ve felt the isolation, the fear, and the desperation. We’ve received the diagnoses, experienced the delays, and suffered the disappointment of another day, week, or month of loving our babies from the other side of a plastic box.
You can do this because we did it, and now we stand with you.”
Love,
Laura
More of Laura + Vivienne + Margot’s NICU Journeys:
“In December of 2019, I went into labor at 22 weeks and 4 days with my identical twins. Baby A, Vivienne, was born at 22 weeks and 5 days. Two days later her sister, Margot, was born.
Our NICU stay was as eventful as they come. The twins both suffered bowel perforations and had emergency bedside surgery on the same day, and that was not the last time they would go to surgery together.
Vivienne spent 135 days in the NICU and Margot spent 224 days in the NICU. Had you told me in the middle of that hospital stay that I would one day hold my daughters at the kitchen counter while they fed themselves fistfuls of blueberries, I would have told you, “You don’t know that.” But somehow, despite half a dozen re-intubations, an eye surgery, a bowel obstruction, and code, I have two toddlers who walk and talk and make people say, “Wow, you would never know.”
