These are comments by Harley, Samara, and Mark on the post “There Are No Gender Politics in the NICU – Baby With a ‘Bucket List’“.
Harley said:
There is nothing worse than being a NICU parent, but there is nothing greater than being a NICU parent who is blessed and lucky enough to take your child home.
Our twins were both in the NICU for three weeks — and one had to be transported to a higher-level NICU after 36 hours. (She died and was revived en route.) We experienced the gut-wrenching lows, watching them turn a dial an 1/8 of an inch and hoping for incremental improvements — as well as the dizzying highs of being able to bring them home.
I am grateful every day for our girls and their health, and the NICU experience (both good and bad) will be with me always. Thank you for sharing this. You’ve encapsulated the NICU experience in a way that both touched me and will educate others.
Samara said:
Just to show that this is not something new, that men and fathers have always been this way…
My 80-year-old grandfather has told me many times how he sat in the NICU for days praying and crying — FOUR different times. My father’s body, along with two of his brothers’, and his sister’s, all rejected their mother’s blood when they were born. (None of them were multiples.) My father and one of his brothers survived. His other brother and his sister did not. My grandfather said how each time felt just as awful and painful as the last. That was over fifty years ago, and he still tears up when he talks about sitting in a rocking chair all night holding my father’s baby blanket and praying he’d make it until the morning.
Mark said:
I’ve been there, crying next to my son’s NICU pod, staring out the window onto Broadway in Washington Heights, praying that my son wasn’t going to have to suffer. No one can comfort you, no one understands unless they too have a child in that situation.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s beautiful and it’s why I never take for granted the fact that my son came home.
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Photo credit: Flickr / hudsonthego