Our son was born on 10/01/2023. As a premature birth at 27 weeks old, he had a stay in the NICU for 116 days. He was on a critical vent, had numerous medical complications, and an innumerable number of challenges to overcome. To start, our son was born at home with little to no notice. My wife woke me in the middle of the night in pain and agony. 10 minutes later, police officers were delivering our son in our bedroom and my wife was crying, "Is he alive?". Trauma and shock prevented us from understanding, let alone processing, what had happened...until we got to the NICU at St. John. At the very outset, the compassion, empathy, and love from the whole team, especially the nurses, cannot fully be expressed using words. We still have a hard time finding ways to describe the positive and healing energy in the NICU. The nurses give that unit life; the essence of what helped us persevere through 116 days of tension, stress, and anxiety. Every day, there was a challenge with our son, and every nurse helped, solved, advocated, empathized, validated, cared, and helped us through each of those challenges.

The nurses in the NICU provided us with so many lessons in parenting and life, too. They taught us, with patience and tact, how to feed our son when the risk of aspirating could be seriously harmful. They taught us how to hold a 2 lb. baby that fit in the palm of your hand, with a CPAP around his face, and more cords hooked up to him than we could count. They taught us how to be courageous when we didn't know if he would live or survive the multiple procedures and challenges he faced. They were our medical language translators; critical vent setting, cPAP, O2 saturation, patent ductus arteriosus, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, retinopathy of prematurity are all words we understood because of them; all things our son had to overcome. They were the parents to our son when we couldn't be because we both had to work. Some nurses would go in to hold our son on their breaks when he wasn't even their patient because they knew the effect of being in the NICU for 116 days. They gave our son attention and interacted with him more than was expected. We were not expecting that the nurses would not only do their job, but would act as surrogate parents to our son, ensuring he was getting the appropriate stimulation, speaking to him, reading him stories, singing to him, helping him reach milestones... showing him love. They were our shoulders to cry on when the daily grind of "wake up, go to work, go to the NICU, eat dinner, sleep, rinse and repeat" became overwhelming. They listened to us tell the same story of his birth over and over again because they knew that is how you make sense of something like this; that is how you begin to heal. They reassured us with compassion when we questioned ourselves. They were the mediators when communication had its inevitable breakdowns. They became a chosen family of sorts; a family to our son.

To say the nurses went above and beyond their normal job duties would be the understatement of the century. They provided us with a comfort that no one else really could because they knew what we were going through, and they chose to provide us with that comfort. We did not know anyone else who had a premature baby or a baby in the NICU for that long. I know their job descriptions might say, "give the patients and the patient's family dignity and respect, empathy and compassion". I doubt it says, "give your patients and the patient's family compassion, care, empathy, and love you would give to your own child or family". That is a choice someone makes that requires sacrifice.

As a clinical social worker, and my wife as a teacher, we understand vicarious trauma. We know what the nurses sacrificed to give us that level of care and comfort. For that, we are forever grateful. I wish there were a way to fully express how much each of them means to us and how they will always hold a place in our hearts. The only way I can express our adoration, love, and respect for the NICU nurses and all of the NICU team is by saying this. The day before our son was discharged from the NICU, my wife and I had a conversation on how we were feeling about everything that was happening. One of the things that came up was this feeling of conflict and grief. We were, of course, elated at the thought of our son finally coming home. I would be lying if I did not admit that, at the same time, we were losing the daily visits with the nurses and the NICU team. As I said before, the nurses give that unit life, and when our son was discharged, we felt a loss in a most beautiful way. The nurses created an environment that we were going to miss. We were going to miss going to the NICU... Imagine that...It is for these reasons and profound gratitude that we nominate the St. John NICU nurses for The DAISY Team Award.