Six years ago this month I was blissfully pregnant with our first child when I spontaneously went into labor just 24 weeks into my pregnancy.
I gritted my teeth and gripped bedrails and flat-out begged my body not to betray me but it birthed her anyhow, delivering my baby into the world all one pound, eight ounces and three and a half months too soon.
We christened her Scarlette and even though she weighed less than six sticks of butter she was the heaviest thing on my heart.
We spent one hundred and fifty six days in the neonatal intensive care unit. It changes your life a little bit, if by “a little bit” you mean “utterly and irrevocably.”
For example, soon after we left the NICU I joined a sorority.
So okay, it’s actually a support group for micro-preemie moms. But I prefer to refer to it as a sorority partially because it sounds less traumatic but mostly because our collective introduction to motherhood was one heck of an initiation.
Plus, on Wednesdays we wear pink.
(Just kidding.)
(Preemie moms wear purple.)
The time I spent in the NICU was reminiscent of my very first day of junior high, when I stood pressed up against the lockers and watched everyone bustle past, outside looking in and feeling like I didn’t belong.
Click here to continue reading this post on The Today Show’s parenting site, where I am honored to be contributing for World Prematurity Day.
