An Unexpected Gift

As it turns out, sometimes good things do come in the mail.

The NICU at Rose Medical Center in Denver does a lot to make you feel… at home (that’s not the right word, but if fits) during your little one’s stay there.

First, let me say that I truly believe that we received the best care possible in the NICU. I think it’s fair to say the care was better there than on the post-partum floor. Of course, that’s not to say the care there is substandard; it was great, but the NICU felt more one-on-one.

In the NICU, your baby’s nurse is truly your baby’s nurse. They know everything about your infant and want to be supportive/helpful to the parents. Doss’s primary nurse (whom I thought of as ‘our’ nurse) was really a special person and for this blog, we’ll call her ‘Mary’.
[ed. note: regular readers of the blog know that everyone has a pseudonym and they all mean something to me.]

Anyway, one of the many ‘personal touch’ things they do is to create handcrafted name signs that hang over the NICU infants’ incubators and/or warmers. And, needless to say, while Doss was there they had his placard over his warmer (it now resides in his memory box).

But since The Squeaker never stayed in the NICU, and the regular post-partum nurses didn’t have enough time to create them for their many healthy charges, she did not have one.

Mary, of course, remedied that.

When I returned to drop off P.Pie’s breast pump, Mary had made a placard for The Squeaker. Unfortunately she spelled Jorja’s name in the traditional style. Naturally, it's the gesture that counts and that one is huge.

And it that was where it stopped, it would be a touching story. But no, this story is a gut-wrencher. Mary not only made The Squeaker another name placard, but she sent along a note that was so touching, I’m all vaklempt just thinking about it as I write.
[ed. note: talk amongst yourselves]

I miss my boy terribly and there are lots of people that I wished had gotten the chance to meet him for just a few minutes.

But I’m honored that Mary knew him his entire life and even though she sees dozens and dozens of babies in a month’s time, she still remembers Doss and Jorja.