Our twins were born prematurely at 33 weeks and 2 days. They were taken right away from OR to the NICU, and that’s where they stayed for the next 3-4 weeks. It was very depressing and difficult not being able to be with/care for them 24/7. We were visiting our babies in the NICU before getting ready to be discharged home without them. If you’ve never experienced that, it’s a horrible heartache to deliver your babies and have to leave them behind and just pray that whoever takes care of them loves them like you do and will show them attention and care like you would while you have to be away.

We were discharged home that Saturday with my babies still in NICU. That’s where Amanda shows up. We go in to visit the twins one evening, and we walk in, and there’s this nurse (Amanda) who is standing over there talking to our baby girl through her isolette while she is feeding her a bottle. We walked up to her, and she introduced herself to my husband and I; she kept watching what she was doing with our baby, and she told us she was feeding her one of her first bottles and explaining why they held them a certain way and how she is holding the bottle, etc. All this while she is still taking time to talk to our baby. Well, Amanda finished up with our Baby Girl and went over to our Baby Boy. While she was caring for him, she explained everything that she was doing as she was talking to our Baby Boy. I knew then that I didn’t have to ever worry about them for the rest of that night because you could see and hear the passion that she had in being there and taking care of the babies.

Throughout all four weeks, she always stayed the same and never changed the way she cared for them. You could honestly tell she fell in love with every baby she was with and that they’d get the most exceptional care while she was there. (All our nurses were wonderful, but Amanda went above and beyond.) So during this time, it’s difficult because you miss a lot of firsts with the babies, and you just miss them when you can’t be there. Amanda was always doing crafts with all the babies for memory keepsakes of growth and milestones reached. She makes the NICU stay brighter with her gifts of little Happies to the families that you find when you go in to visit your baby/babies in the NICU. She always kept us updated on any changes, and with anything they’d done, that was silly or medical. She made a connection with both of our babies, and you could just tell from when she’d talk to them. Amanda is an angel on earth in the NICU. She eased our minds and hearts and cheered us up in one of the most difficult times we had to go through.