NICU Awareness Month

I write this on the last day of September, and just like that, another month has passed us by. Besides September being my, and my husband's birth month, it has gained even more significance in my life after my son was born prematurely last year. September is Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Awareness month, and like many other circumstances in life, though I was aware of what a NICU is, and does, I never really thought that my baby would end up there, or that I would become a NICU mother.

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To say that the experience was harrowing, frightening, and life-changing would be putting it mildly. So much so that to this day, I can sometimes still hear the sound of the beeping monitors, and I will never forget how my world just froze when I got that dreaded call to let me know that my son was being intubated.

No matter where in the world, I am sure that NICU parents have a shared experience of sorts - a trauma, if you will. None of us would wish it on our worst enemies. Those four letters are loaded, and though it is very quite simply put an intensive care unit for neonates, the feelings and emotions are so much more complex than that. It is a place that stays with you forever. Undoubtedly, an experience that will change you forever.

The NICU is a place whose walls have probably heard just as much, if not more pleas, cries, prayers and bargains than most churches. It is a place where parents find themselves most vulnerable, and helpless - somewhere where even if an alarm rings many meters down the hallways, your

IT'S THE SMALL THINGS

ALEX M. EDUQUE