What sets him apart is his start to life. Gage was born at 22 weeks and five days and spent four months in Sunnybrook’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“It hasn’t been an easy path, but it has been so rewarding,” says Heather, Gage’s mom, who explains Gage has low vision, autism and receives therapy for mobility issues. “He has disabilities but we make the best of it and celebrate every milestone.”

Dr. Eugene Ng, Medical Director of the NICU at Sunnybrook, is on the frontline when an extremely premature baby is about to be born. “Caring for a micro-preemie like Gage draws in a whole support from the inter-professional team so we can ensure the best possible outcomes for these infants,” says Dr. Ng. “For example, we give steroids to the mothers at the right time, to help babies’ lungs develop, which helps reduce the risk of serious complications and death. One of the most important steps centres on discussions with families about what having a premature baby means for them.”

Dr. Ng and Heather share thoughts for families who are facing a very preterm birth:

Dr. Ng: These are often difficult conversations. As health care providers, we need to outline for families the possible outcomes of having a very premature baby. These babies are at high risk of many developmental challenges, including vision and hearing problems, motor delay, impaired learning and behavioural and other developmental challenges. Sunnybrook is a leader in developing treatments for infants born at 22 and 23 weeks. However, it’s a very heartbreaking reality that not all of these babies will survive. We provide information to families that if their baby lives, they will be very fragile over their first few months of life, and may have ongoing health issues into childhood and as an adult.

Gage, born at 22 weeks and five days, in Sunnybrook’s NICU

What we try to keep in mind is that families’ concept of disability varies and depends on their family circumstances and value systems. I see the role of the health care team as experts providing information to the family, but ultimately the family has to make decisions that are right for them. There is no right or wrong decision in these situations.

Heather: “What do you want?” I remember my doctor asking that question. In my heart, I knew that I wanted to try. I wanted the team to resuscitate Gage. I knew my values and this was the right path for my family. I know many families wouldn’t have chosen the same path and I’m okay with that. You need to do what is best for you and your family.

Dr. Ng: I heard these early discussions referred to as “a meeting of two experts,” which I thought was great. The health care provider offers their expert clinical knowledge and the family are experts on their lived experience with health and illness. Bringing this all together results in ‘shared decision making.’

Heather: That’s right. For one family, one condition might mean something. For another, it might mean something totally different, even though the condition is the same. Gage ticks the ‘disabled box,’ and it hasn’t been an easy path, but we find love and joy everyday.

Dr. Ng: A centre like Sunnybrook, with a maternal fetal medicine team specializing in high-risk pregnancies and a Level 3 NICU team specializing in the care of the very preterm infants, enables us to not only provide expert treatment to these infants, but also to start educating and offering strategies to their families in caring for their special infants as early as possible. We have a team called BOOST (Building Opportunities for Optimal and Smooth Transitions) that focuses on the transition from the NICU to home by engaging in family integrated care, empowering families in providing care and to advocate for their infants. In this stage, we shift much of the decision making for the child to the parents while in the NICU. In doing so, we are starting to build their “parental capacity” muscles before babies are discharged from the hospital.

Heather: I have a photo of the first time I held Gage. He’s on my chest in the NICU. He was so tiny. A few months later, he left the hospital breathing on his own and breastfeeding. Now he’s skiing and loves anything to do with animals. He works hard to do the same things kids his age do, but he does them. It has taken work to get there, but he’s come out on the other side.

The post Meet Gage, born under 23 weeks: “It hasn’t been easy, but it has been so rewarding” appeared first on Your Health Matters.

In December last year, she and her husband lost their son Josiah. He was stillborn. Then, in July 2020, the family welcomed twins, also at 27 weeks.

Elise was born weighing 908 grams and David was born weighing 1088 grams.

The twins are happy and healthy, home now with Danielle and her husband Akeem.

Danielle’s journey has been anything but ordinary. She went into preterm labour at 21 weeks of pregnancy, meaning she was in and out of Sunnybrook’s High Risk Obstetrics Unit until the twins were born.

The twins stayed in Sunnybrook’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 34 days before transferring to Michael Garron Hospital.

On top of that, she developed a brain condition that required her to have fluid drained from her spine.

Asked about her time at Sunnybrook, she breaks into a huge smile. “I remember every single staff person by name.”

She lists the names of nurses in High Risk Obstetrics who held her hand when she missed her husband due to visiting restrictions during the pandemic. It’s the same for the care team in the neonatal intensive care unit – she can name them all, from nurses to respiratory therapists to social workers.

One individual that left a mark was her maternal fetal medicine specialist, or high-risk obstetrician, Dr. Amir Aviram. “Dr. Aviram understood how difficult it was experiencing a pregnancy after loss and during a pandemic. It still brings me to tears remembering how we felt supported, so well informed and cared for.”

The twins stayed in Sunnybrook’s NICU for 34 days, then moved to Michael Garron Hospital for a few weeks. Danielle often thinks about her time at the hospital.

“When I was feeling down, staff always tried to brighten my day. They were professional but still warm and tried to gain insight into our lives. One nurse in particular asked the name of my first son. That meant a lot.”

Josiah, the name of Danielle and Akeem’s first son, means ‘God heals’. “We had faith we would have more children.”

The post Giving birth at 27 weeks: A family’s journey of heartbreak and joy appeared first on Your Health Matters.

The PP stands for Preemie Power!

At our unit, we were able to hand out lovely WPD goodies, including bibs and pins from the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, and custom made superhero capes from Loved From Head to Toe.   Our current NICU families came together and had cake and celebrated their wonderful babies and their equally wonderful accomplishments. Graduate families joined a multi-hospital celebration held downtown near the CN Tower. The location was chosen because the CN Tower, as part of the World Prematurity Day Global Illumination Project, was one of hundreds of international monuments that was glowing purple to honour preemies.  Thank you so much to the organizers and to the wonderful families who came out to celebrate.

Way to go, CN Tower!

If you’d like to see more beautiful buildings lit up in purple, read inspiring family stories, and find out about what other NICUs did across Canada, we encourage you to visit the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation’s Facebook page, which is filling up with amazing photographs and updates. And last but DEFINITELY not least – please take a moment and watch this amazing, incredible video made by a graduate family from our NICU.  It’s absolutely beautiful and it captures so much about the NICU experience in a few short moments.

Until next year … happy World Prematurity Day, and thank you for your support!

The post Oh, what a day that was! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

The post Preemie Power! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

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Unlike many of the parents who unexpectedly find themselves in the NICU, I knew my twin girls would come early. Carrying mono mono twins means delivering by 32 weeks at the latest by C-section, but many, including mine, come earlier.

After discovering that I was having twins and they would be preemie, I thought I could handle it. I figured by 32 weeks, they would be little but pretty healthy; they would spend some time in the NICU growing chubby and then they would be home and the whole ordeal would be behind us. I have never been so wrong before in my life.

At 29 weeks, my two girls in distress, I was wheeled in for an emergency C-section. They were born, but did not cry, and were rushed into the next room, to the waiting staff who got them breathing and brought them to their new home in Sunnybrook’s NICU.

Before I became a preemie mum, I had no idea what being a preemie really meant. I knew there were health complications, but didn’t know that being born premature can affect feeding and even can have an effect when your baby goes to school years down the road.

I didn’t know then, what I do now, what so many preemie parents know; that having a baby in the NICU is one of the hardest things that you will ever go through. When my girls were still safely inside my tummy, we took a tour of Sunnybrook’s NICU. We knew we would spend time here, we just didn’t know how much. We peeked in the pods, met nurses and doctors; saw the tiny isolettes, the medical equipment. It was reassuring and terrifying at the same time. We knew we were lucky to be at Sunnybrook, where our son was also born not even two years before, we knew we were in the best hands, but that did not change the fact that we never wanted to find ourselves there. We didn’t want to walk by the parents sitting outside, waiting for ultrasounds, turning right into the unit, feeling scared of what we might find, but we did, every day for 80 days, I made that journey, and I am the better for it.

I am a better mother because of my preemie babies. Yes, I had, and still have, tremendous guilt about their difficult beginning in life. My heart aches for what they have been through, when they were so small that even preemie diapers were too big. Yet, every day when I held my girls, the greatest sense of peace and stillness would come over me. The sounds of the NICU would drift away, and it would just be the three of us. Now, ten months later, I remember that feeling. The feeling of being a mum to two beautiful fighters and their big brother, who loved to practice saying their names.

It is never easy being a preemie parent, it is a badge that many of us wear with honour for the rest of our lives, but we still confront our own fears, our reminders of the beginning. When it’s the hardest of days, when the doctors give us news that we can’t comprehend right away, when we question our abilities to parent, it is important to remember the calmness, the feeling of your baby, tucked safely on your chest, your hearts beating together as one. It is important to remember that peace can come from chaos.

The post Expecting Preemies appeared first on Your Health Matters.

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World Prematurity Week falls at an interesting time for us, as it is right around our daughter’s birthday.  I found out about it reading a whiteboard last year while walking into the NICU to see our days-old daughter.

In some ways, I view our daughter’s prematurity as an isolated time period of our lives while she was in the hospital.  We live near Sunnybrook, so every morning, we would wake up and drive to the hospital; we’d go check in on her, and speak with her caregiver about how her night was.  My wife would stay in our daughter’s room, while I would move to the lounge to work.  We ate lunch in the lounge together every day, and when I was done work, I’d return to our daughter’s room to spend time with her.

We were there through the big Ice Storm (and subsequent power outage), as well as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day.  My sister visited from Ireland, and we celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary.  We watched the Canadian Men and Women’s Gold Medal hockey games in the lounge with other parents.  We made friends, saw other parents arrive, and saw parents leave;  being in the NICU was just part of our lives.

We were prepared to spend my 37th birthday there, but our daughter was discharged 2 days before, which was the perfect gift.  But once she was discharged, our NICU routine was over – it felt like we were leaving her prematurity behind.

Of course, the reality is that our daughter’s prematurity is not isolated to those 3.5 months.  We bring her back to Sunnybrook for check-ups on a regular basis to see how she’s developing.  When we take her to see our paediatrician, she will tell us how she’s doing in general, as well how she’s doing as a “preemie”.

When friends and acquaintances ask how old she is, we tell them both her actual age and corrected age (if this term is new to you, it is based around the baby’s original due date – so when she reached her due date, she was 0 months “corrected”);  with strangers, we give her corrected age only, as this will line up with her size (to avoid going into the whole backstory, or explain why she’s 1 year old but the size of an 8-9 month old).  There always seems to be “asterisk” when someone asks about her.

We have also been very protective of her, especially with strangers trying to meet her.  My wife and I have both had to fend off people attempting to reach into her stroller to touch her (to avoid her catching anything).

However, due to her prematurity and how small she was when she was born, we appreciate her milestones and her development so much, knowing where she started from.  She’s a very strong, social, and happy baby, so when she first laughed, crawled, stood up, it made us so happy;  we appreciate every accomplishment even more.

Ultimately, I look at my daughter’s prematurity as something that’s a part of our lives, but not something that defines who she is.  And we’re very thankful for the friends we made while in the NICU, and still feel a part of that community.

The post A dad’s gratitude appeared first on Your Health Matters.

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Norah Elizabeth Aoife Harrop was born at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, at 10:02pm via emergency C-section on Wednesday, May 14th, 2014. At a little over 27 weeks gestation, Norah came 13 weeks early and weighed in at 3.1lbs. We don’t know why she decided to come early, and we’ve learned that it’s pretty common not to know. Two and a half hours after the first contraction at 6:30pm, we learned that there was nothing to do to prevent delivery. An hour after that, Norah arrived. 

During her 12 week hospital stay, we wrote a daily blog to keep our families and friends updated on her progress. This seemed like a kindness to others, but it was really because we didn’t know moment to moment whether we’d be able to bear a one on one conversation about Norah’s health or future. Below is an excerpt from the blog, four weeks in. We were still completely overwhelmed by the experience, and overwhelmed by our support system. We were (and are) painfully aware that not all NICU families are as lucky as ours. 

Norah at 2 days

Today, Norah is four weeks old. The last four weeks have been the most hectic, love-filled, scary and difficult of our lives. The range of emotion is incredible – in dark moments we curse our terrible luck. When the cloud lifts, we realize that we are even luckier than we ever knew.

As sometimes stubbornly independent and polite people, we try not to ask people for anything that might inconvenience them. It is so humbling to be at a point where we will brazenly ask for whatever our friends and family might be able to provide. If we haven’t asked you yet, we will. It takes a village to support our family right now.

We have discovered that our family and friends are even more amazing than we thought. We have discovered that without asking, each of them will take it upon themselves to help lift a little weight off of us to make this time easier.

Our parents have put their lives on hold to help in any way they can. And do we ever accept. Babysitting, unpacking, making all decisions on our reno from Norah’s birthday on, taking our two year old son Eddie for overnights so that we can sleep and so much more. We all owe our parents gratitude, but this has been above and beyond.

Family from near and far have helped in so many ways. Emails, cards and texts to let us know that they’re thinking of us. Food, babysitting, personal concierge services and more. A well timed call, long term doggy boarding, and pastries at the hospital. It’s all been crucial to our survival.

Friends have acted as personal chefs, nannies, personal assistants and fetchers of frozen drinks. Sources of information – medical, developmental, updates on the outside world, and being our cheerleaders.

Co-workers have put aside their own personal lives to cover for me; I’m is still working reduced hours and left on zero notice during a very busy time. They are full of encouragement and not a word of complaint about missed emails, general lack of focus, and sometimes just not being there.

Lindsay’s coworkers have been supportive beyond belief and reason.  She didn’t have to worry about any lesson planning or test marking – the math department took over and got her supply going without her having to lift a finger.

Our extended circle stretches beyond what we could have dreamed. Notes, comments, and blog views from friends of our parents, and parents and siblings of our friends.

Above all else, we have felt so much love over the last four weeks. Thank you all for everything you’ve done, whether we captured it here or not. And whether we were functioning enough at the time to say thank you. Thank you all for your continued support. The blog alone averages over 100 page views daily. It makes us feel like we have a huge crowd behind us, holding us up when we’re too tired, discouraged or scared to do it alone.

So on Norah’s four week birthday, we thank you. We will thank you all for the rest of our lives. And we’ll continue to lean on you for a while.

All our love,

Jen, Lindsay, Eddie, Norah & Stella

Norah at nearly 6 months (3 months corrected)

The post Norah’s Story appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Alana Romain writes about her own Rockstar Preemies and volunteers her time in the NICU to help other preemie families. She has graciously shared this post with us. Thanks, Alana!

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When a healthy full-term baby is born, there’s no doubt over how to respond.  We congratulate the new parents, coo over the beautiful new life that’s been brought into the world.  It’s joyful, exciting.  But when a baby is born prematurely, it’s hard to know what to say.  Is it happy news, or sad?  Do we celebrate?  Pass around baby photos?

Having a premature baby is heartbreaking.  You feel scared, and helpless, and anxious about the future.  After spending over 100 days in the NICU with my own children, Reid and Madeleine – fraternal twins, born at twenty-five weeks gestation – I can easily say that I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.  So I understand the sad looks and the “hang in there” hugs, the loved ones (and sometimes strangers) sending prayers and well wishes.  It’s hard, and it’s sad, and we really do need the love and kind thoughts and encouragement.  But there’s one thing that nobody tells you.  And that is that having a preemie is still really, really wonderful.

If you have a baby in the NICU right now, or if you’ve recently brought your baby home, I can imagine that it might be very hard to imagine feeling like there is an upside to what you are going through.  And, really, that’s because right now there isn’t an upside.  Life as a NICU parent is not easy, and it’s impossible to relax until your child has finally been discharged home.  The transition of taking your preemie home is still difficult though, a huge, scary time full of medical worries and second-guessing your own judgement and maybe adjusting to life at home with oxygen tanks and g-tubes and lots of medication and doctor’s appointments.  Preemie parents know better than anyone else that the complexities of prematurity do not even sort of end at discharge, and that can be a difficult reality to live with.

I often think that, at first, having a preemie is like holding a scale in your hands that is weighted on one side only, with bad experiences and fears and loss.  Eventually, and very, very slowly, happier moments begin to creep in, weighing down the other side of the scale, and that keeps happening, more and more, the further out you get from the day your baby was born.  Madeleine and Reid are nineteen months corrected now, and thankfully, the happy side of the scale has become very heavy, allowing me the chance to heal, just a little, and look forward to the future with a bit less worry that more bad news is just around the corner.  But because of that scale, the balancing out of good and bad, of pain and joy, I’ve also been able to realize that, as parents of premature babies, we may have just been given a gift that full-term parents haven’t.

Preemie parents know loss.  The loss of the dream of a healthy pregnancy, of a big, pregnant belly and a fat, crying baby, and the experience that we thought we were going to have that was going to look like everyone else’s.  We know fear and helplessness, wanting so desperately to help our children and take away their pain, wishing we could do anything to make sure they’d come home with us when this was all over.  We know what it’s like to not know what our future will look like, what our children’s futures will look like, knowing that maybe it will be much harder than we ever imagined.

But we also know what it’s like to look at an impossibly tiny baby with paper-thin skin and eyes that can’t yet open, attached to machines and IV lines, and still honestly feel overwhelming love, still honestly believing they are the most beautiful being that ever existed.  We also know what it’s like to find joy in the tiniest milestones, such as gaining enough weight to join the ‘kilo club’, of moving onto CPAP, or wearing clothes (finally!) for the first time.  We know what it’s like to sit and cuddle our babies skin-to-skin for hours on end, of hooking ourselves up to hospital breast pumps no matter how much we hate it because it’s one of the most important things we can do to help our children grow.  We know what it’s like to love someone so much that we would give anything to see them healthy and happy.  We know what it’s like to realize, finally, that it doesn’t really matter if your child has learning disabilities or motor issues or vision problems, or if they take forever to learn to walk – or even if they never learn – because we know that, as long as they live, we’ll figure the rest out.  We know that no matter how frustrated we may get when they cry or yell or throw things or climb on something they aren’t supposed to climb on, there’s still always a part of us remembering the time when their lungs weren’t strong enough to cry, and we didn’t know if they’d ever yell or throw things or climb.  We know that every milestone, whatever it looks like and whenever it’s reached, is a celebration.  We know that, however overwhelming this parenting thing can feel sometimes, our child is one more child that could have died but didn’t, and that the rest – any little tiny thing we get on top of that – is just icing on the cake.

There is a lot of variation in preemie outcomes, and some parents have it easier or harder than others.  Some of us struggle more, some of us have a harder road to travel, and maybe the blessings aren’t always easily apparent.  But the one thing I know for sure that we all share – the one thing that the doctors and nurses, our families and friends, and all the other moms and dads of the world can’t truly ever understand – is that when we look at our children (our perfect, gorgeous, amazing children) we see warriors, babies who have fought harder and overcome more than we could possibly have imagined, and that getting to be their parents is the best, most incredible thing that could have ever happened to us.

Being a preemie mom has made me a better parent and a better human being.  And I have a feeling it’s made you one too.

Rockstar preemies indeed!

The post The Unexpected Blessing of a Premature Birth appeared first on Your Health Matters.

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Take heart, preemie parent, you are not alone. I know you don’t feel like a mom or dad when your baby is in the incubator. You go home and your baby stays in the box. The plastic uterus is a poor replacement for the real thing.

You are not alone, for you’ve joined a community of parents who are fiercely proud. We endure those horrible moments, we witness great pain, and we come back to the hospital the next day to do it all again.

My son, Torran, was born without fluid. After continuous bleeding since my 6^th week of pregnancy, my water broke at 19 weeks gestation, creating a condition called oligohydramnios. I waited to see whether or not Torran would survive his birth.

Our 136 days in hospital were the most heartbreaking moments of our lives. Torran had several preemie complications, including IVH (bleeding in his brain), infection (sepsis), and holes in his heart (ASD,VSD, PDA). He struggled on a ventilator for 8 weeks. On his due date, he had brain surgery to correct hydrocephalus.

Life forced us to be patient when all we wanted to do was run home with our baby. We couldn’t remove his life support, even though we knew his life would be complicated. Torran is now a thriving six year old boy. He has a little laundry list of medical and developmental complications, but our lives are brighter because he’s alive.

I wrote Growing A Rainbow based upon our experience in the hospital. It’s a fundraising venture for the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation. The narrative of Torran’s start in life, through my eyes, raises awareness about the emotional trauma of prematurity. It is the coping tool all preemie parents need.

This is an excerpt of Growing a Rainbow, and a piece of my heart:

Torran exists between a fetal and an infant state. We’re told he can hear us. I assume that’s true if his ear bones developed properly and his brain has sound wiring. There’s certainly no way he comprehends language yet. 

Babies have an acute sense of smell. We probably reek of hand rinse. He may think his parents are alcoholics. 

I don’t know that he’s able to focus on my face properly because I’m always behind the plastic wall of the incubator, several inches away. 

All I can do is hope that somehow he knows his parents are here, and that he’s loved so very much. It is so unfair that this innocent child will spend the first months of his life enduring harshness. I have to put him through it if he is to have a chance of survival, even though it hurts me to do so. 

Everyone keeps telling us that our family is strong and inspiring. Then why do I feel like I’m losing the will to fight? 

An aura of gloom possesses me. I can’t shake it, even though the weather outside is brilliant. Not a day passes without tears. 

I’m not a person who indulges in self-pity. We don’t know how to repay everyone’s kindness, positivity and generosity. Feeling desolate seems like an offense to them, as if I’m rejecting their encouragement. 

But, I can’t run away from this. There is a reason why I’m here for so long every day. It’s more than my internal drive to stay informed about Torran’s medical progression. I’m his advocate and the attestant to his plight. 

I can’t be a “normal” mother no how much I yearn to hold Torran. Like the other families here, Bruce and I adapted to a new modality of family life for our emotional survival. 

These clinicians and therapists know more about our babies functioning than we do. It seems that way. Well-trained, proficient strangers care for our children. They don’t kiss away the big boo-boos.

Lesley and Torran. He’s still a hero, though not 2 pounds any more!

The post Growing a Rainbow appeared first on Your Health Matters.

As we approach World Prematurity Day, on Sunday November 17th, I am reminded of how far my little girls have come. This time last year, I never could have envisioned what was to come. I had just begun to feel my girls (I didn’t know that they were even girls at the time) move for the first time. I was finally starting to get that pregnancy belly when they decided to make their early debut. Reflecting back on the entire ordeal, I cannot imagine what I would have done if Sunnybrook hadn’t accepted me into their care that scary, Monday night.

How do you begin to thank an institution for giving you the greatest gift of all – the life of your babies?

For those of you unfamiliar with NICUs, they are generally comprised of a large room with anywhere from 6-8 babies. There is no privacy, and you are forced to stand on one side of your baby’s isolette, so as to uphold patient confidentiality. The NICU at Sunnybrook, however, was completely different. Babies have their own rooms, with built-in couches for parents to sleep on. You are encouraged to stay as for as long as you want. There are sliding glass doors to provide that privacy. They even have specialized rooms for twins so that both babies can be together. The physical set-up alone made it a much more intimate environment to spend those long days and nights.

Then, there was the staff. We were privileged to have met so many nurses, nurse practitioners, doctors, respiratory therapists, lactation consultants, parent coordinators, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, social workers, environmental services professionals, and “dairy queen,” staff. Not only did they all work tirelessly to promote the health and well-being of our girls, but they supported us during the most emotionally-charged time of our lives. I cannot tell you how many times the nurses, for example, sacrificed their breaks to provide comfort to me when one of the girls was having a rough day or when everything became so overwhelming. The random ‘drop-ins’ from the respiratory therapists or pharmacists helped to normalize a sometimes unbearable situation.

Celebrating holidays in the NICU was challenging enough and the staff worked so hard to make things a little easier on the parents. There was a visit from Santa (one of the neonatologists dressed up as Santa) and a custom stocking filled with little presents for each baby, a cookie exchange that staff did for the parents, Valentine’s day surprises with hand and footprints from our nurses, celebrations of the girls’ 100 days with a personalized banner and cute stuffed animals from some of our primary nurses, and all of the little awards that the girls received along the way. I also had the honour of judging an Easter Egg decorating contest among the Respiratory Therapists. All of these little actions served to normalize this experience for us and bring a glimmer of hope to an often desolate situation.

We had the privilege of having primary nursing care, wherein when specific nurses were on shift, they were assigned to look after our girls. It was comforting to know that these nurses understood Maja and Alexis and advocated for them. I remember one of our nurses challenging an order to do bloodwork on Alexis, because she knew what was normal behaviour from Alexis and that she wasn’t, in fact, sick. There were the countless cuddles from all of the staff and this was so comforting to know that they were being held in our absence. Then there were the dreaded eye exams. One of our other primary nurses always seemed to have the privilege (NOT!) of working those days. As a parent, I could not even begin to watch one of those exams so I would wait in the hall and I would get the “all clear” when it was safe to return. My anxiety was lessened substantially when I knew that she was there with the girls.

Although we were happy to come home and leave the NICU days behind us, it was also a grieving process for me as I lost the company  and companionship that I found in all of the exceptional Sunnybrook staff. They have, and always will hold, a special place in my heart. When I look into the eyes of my girls and watch them achieve their milestones, I know that it is because of the love, dedication, and support that was given to them along the way.

Thank you just doesn’t seem like enough!

The post When thank you isn’t enough … appeared first on Your Health Matters.