In Honor of Preemies Everywhere

Today is World Prematurity Awareness Day. I know, not something that is probaby on your radar. But it is on mine. While this blog is and has largely been focused on adoption, what many may not know is that before we adopted our girls we had two premature baby boys. Thankfully they both survived and thrived and are now ages 12 and 9.

Freeland was our first preemie. Born at 33 weeks he weighed a whopping 5 lbs. 5 oz. He did so well and was only in the NICU for 9 days. Those were 9 hard days and I glad I did not know that exactly three years later we would be back in the same NICU with...

We stopped by the NICU on the way from recovery to my room to see Freeland 

First night home with Freeland

Casper. Our little 27 weeker. He weighed 2 lbs. 11 oz. and was 13 1/2 in. long at birth. He was in the NICU for nine weeks. A week for every day that Freeland was there. Again our little fighter thrived, although he did earn himself the nickname "the king of alarms" in the NICU.

Casper is about a week old here. You can't tell that his little arms were the size of my finger.

Leaving the hospital with Casper

Today those days are distant memories. My boys are just like any other boys. They are healthy, happy, hearty boys. We have no on-going health concerns.

The three boys around the time we began our fist adoption.

But we will never forget the days when we called in to the NICU when we couldn't be there and stood with pounding heart and a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs as we waited to speak with the nurse. We will never forget the exhaustion. Or the terror of witnessing a "really bad alarm". We will never forget the panic of getting a phone call from the hospital at midnight.

And we will certainly never forget the nurses and doctors who cared for our boys so carefully and competently when we could not.