To the mom with the baby in the NICU right now,
You don’t know me, but I’ve been praying for you. I, myself, just gave birth last June to a 27 weeker, a beautiful, now healthy baby girl.
Your NICU experience will be hard and frustrating. You’ll be overly emotional. You’ll be exhausted. You probably won’t take good care of yourself. You’re going to stare at a monitor, watching numbers rise and fall for hours, bored, yet unable to do anything else. People will say weird things to you. You’ll question if you’re doing it right – being there for your baby enough, pumping enough, prioritizing the right people/activities… You’ll get blazing mad at the same doctors and nurses you trust your baby’s very life with – especially when you get to the end and you just. want. to take. her home.
But this is what I told myself, and I thought I would share in case it helps you get through it as well…
In the traumatic, “we need to deliver your baby NOW” moment, I promised God I’d raise my baby to do anything He called her to if He saved her. I literally laid there, in tears, swarmed by doctors and nurses, praying, “She’s yours, God, save her.”
And He did save her.
Throughout our NICU experience (69 days), I realized I was afraid of what God might call her to do because of my promise. I wholeheartedly believe she will be a better disciple than I’ll ever be because God gave her life out of the muck and mire that was our pregnancy and her first months in this world.
You have a precious fighter on your hands. I’m so glad for the health he/she’s been blessed with this far. I will continue to pray that he/she continues to thrive beyond imaginable, because God has massive, huge plans for that teeny, tiny little one.
Please be encouraged.
I hope this is the hardest thing you ever have to go through. And I hope you have just a village of people rallying around you.
He is with you always. (Matthew 28:18-20)
So much love to you! Keep pumping, mama!
P.S. Just 6.9 weeks until the March for Babies (Ok, it’s 7, but it’s not too late to donate a dime for each day of Oaklee’s NICU stay – that’s just $6.90 – or maybe even a dollar per day?)! Click here for a reminder of what March of Dimes does/did for us.