Our son A was born at 27 weeks and 1lb and spent three months in the BI NICU. Rebecca was such an incredible and outstanding primary nurse throughout his stay that we now tell people she is his third parent. First, Rebecca took exemplary care of our son. She went out of her way to make him comfortable - sometimes before we realized he was uncomfortable - and to advocate to the broader care team with us when something wasn’t right, such as identifying when he just didn’t seem like himself and helping the team catch his PPHN before it became fatal. Rebecca missed the solar eclipse to take care of A because he was misbehaving. She supported our requests to connect with specialists, reminded us to follow up with them, and filled us in on meetings with the doctors that we could not attend.

Second, Rebecca educated us on how to take care of our son. She kept us up to date with excellent descriptions of his current medical status in terms we could understand, re-explaining when we asked her the same questions multiple times, and referring us to NPs and attendings for more complicated issues and new diagnoses (and then making sure they saw us that day). We are first-time parents who didn’t even get to the third trimester, hadn’t read any books or accessed resources on how to care for an infant, and had barely planned for postpartum life when our son was born. Rebecca held our hands for basic skills from diaper changes to swaddling and taught us important parenting tips like shushing and back pats for calming fussy babies.

Third, especially for A's mom, who spent full days almost every day of our 3 months at BI, Rebecca became a friend as much as the nurse taking care of our child. The NICU is a hard place to be for any amount of time, let alone over 3 months, but we always knew our day would be okay when Rebecca was on. We joked about A’s silly baby behaviors and talked about weekend plans, and Rebecca made sure Mom was taking care of herself by going to eat something every once in a while.

Finally, we want to point out Rebecca’s care for A beyond just medical care. She lovingly took time to make beautiful milestone crafts for him (and us) that we will treasure forever, even one for A’s grandmother’s birthday. She helped us put on adorable but complicated outfits and take photoshoots for A’s baby book, even when a onesie would have been so much easier for her. She told us she would love to hear updates if we wanted to send them from A’s next NICU and childhood - not intrusive, but caring: A’s third parent.

Rebecca’s care for A made the time that could have been the worst, most traumatic thing that ever happened to our family not only manageable but oddly full of happy memories of our son’s early days. We loved our whole BI care team but we are hoping to leave our new, fancier NICU to return to BI when A is almost ready to come home, just so that A can graduate from the NICU under Rebecca’s care. We will always be grateful for Rebecca and everything she did for our son and our family, keeping him alive and keeping us sane.