NICU Series Baby Em

I was going to try to write the stories by who we met first, but I'm not 100% sure who that was anymore, and I wanted to start with the lighter stories and move on from there. I also realized that this will be from my point of view, so this will probably be not as great of detail as if the parents were telling it, but my hopes is to just give a glimpse of all the different types of NICU stories that are out there. I know that usually when I think of a NICU I think of preemie babies being the only ones in there, but that is not always the case! Usually most babies are a bit younger, but Lua was full term in the nicu so not all the time are babies in for being born too early.

This will be a very short story since it is the one that I remember the least, but what I mostly remember is the connection made with the mother, even for the short time they were in the NICU.

Baby Em.
I first met her father at the Ronald house. We had dinner with him one night and he told use how he had a 2 1/2 year old daughter and their new born was in the NICU. She was one of the handful of cases where her esophagus didn't connect correctly to her stomach, or Esophageal atresia. This meant she was having difficulty eating and she would require surgery to repair the esophagus.
I regret not writing down stories sooner because now I cannot remember if she was born early or if she was full term, but she wasn't the first baby that we knew of that had this happen in the hospital we were at. She was actually the second baby we heard that had this, but there had been, I believe Em's mom said, the 7th case the hospital had seen, and they were all from the Green Bay area!
It was easy to relate to this family being that they had 2 daughters like us and both about the same ages! They were very scared and worried for their little baby! It was hard for the dad to be there by himself, but with in the next few days his daughter and wife had arrived to the Ronald house.
I met the mom on the bus to the NICU. She turned around to me and said, we are in the same pod! I was really focused on Lua I had really not looked around at my pod except for the baby across from us. We started chatting and talking about what we were both in for after that! Baby Em was a very cute, sweet little baby, and I loved seeing their pod full of people and their little baby moving around in her little crib. Em had her surgery pretty soon after she had arrived at the hospital and started her recovery process, she did have some troubles eating and gaining weight for a little while. I remember talking to the mom one day after we had gotten back to the Ronald house. It broke my heart, she was in tears for the fear of how long her baby would be in the NICU. She wanted so badly to get her daughter back to her home town, and keep working on feedings and go for daily weight checks at her hospital. This was so hard for her, I wish I could have just told her that things would be okay! And she would get there, it could have been so much worse! But any mother who has a child in the NICU does Not want to hear those things. Just because my daughters situation was waaay worse than hers, it still wouldn't be right to tell her, well you could have a baby with no muscle and have the doctors give you the option to let your baby die... Anyway, that mother was a hero though, because the next day she went to the doctors and gave them the plan! They were to be discharged and she would take her baby in daily to make sure she was gaining weight. After a, what was probably very long 6 or 7 days for them, they were headed for home!

I wonder how all the babies are doing that we met, but I never hear from this family any more, so I really wonder how they are doing and how that baby is growing! Wow she would be a year old already too!