The Mighty Logo

A Thank You Letter to Every NICU Mom Out There

The most helpful emails in health
Browse our free newsletters

I wrote a little thank you to a couple of my closest friends from our time in the NICU. And as I wrote it out, I realized it could be for anyone. So I want to say a big thank you to every NICU mom out there in the big wide world.

Thank you for being each other’s friends.

Thank you for being the people we literally always vent with.

Thank you for understanding.

A baby's foot under the bili light

Thank you for loving our miracle children, even when you may have never met them.

Thank you for sharing yours.

Thank you for making an altogether unbearable year that little bit more bearable.

Thank you for helping each other keep expressing.

Thank you for being shoulders for each other to cry on.

Thank you for showing each other the ropes.

Thank you for not talking.

Thank you for talking.

Thank you for liking and disliking the same nurses and doctors as we did.

Thank you for not comparing our miracle babies.

Thank you for being envious but still always happy for us when things went well.

Thank you for putting our expressing equipment together for us when our hands shook too much.

Thank you for only comparing our milk production in your head.

But thank you for understanding when we said it out loud.

Thank you for the middle of the night, being there, awake.

Thank you for all the times we walked by each other in the corridor and for speaking when it was a time for it, and walking past when it wasn’t.

Thank you for all the swearing.

If I were a wish-on-a-star type of person, I’d wish for all of you and your families to have a year full of milestone hitting, full of normality (but not too normal), full of smiles and love, and I would wish that it was a year 100 million times better than this one. I would wish for you to have no reasons to cry. And I’d wish for you to be able to leave a little bit of the heartbreak back in the previous year. Lock it away in that year and throw away the key.

Keep talking to each other.

Especially now, as we’re in a new year and have a little panic about that.

Thank you, NICU moms.

All of you.

From,

a NICU mom

Follow this journey on Charlie and Oliver.

The Mighty is asking its readers the following: Write a thank you letter to someone you realize you don’t thank enough. If you’d like to participate, please send a blog post to community@themighty.com. Please include a photo for the piece, a photo of yourself and 1-2 sentence bio. Check out our Submit a Story page for more about our submission guidelines.

Originally published: January 25, 2016
Want more of The Mighty?
You can find even more stories on our Home page. There, you’ll also find thoughts and questions by our community.
Take Me Home