I wish there were adequate words to tell you what Elizabeth has meant to our family in our darkest hour, but I’ll try my best here. We wish there were Elizabeths on every floor of your hospitals everywhere. You have some standout nurses in NICU, and we have been deeply grateful for many of them, but there is one nurse that we feel we will remember when we think of our son, N’s birth, and when he has grown up.

Quite literally, Elizabeth was the answer to our prayers. We were feeling our lowest, worried, and discouraged about several things that I’m certain many NICU moms feel. This isn’t how we pictured our first weeks welcoming our sweet little baby into this world. Personally, I was weary from the exhaustive visits with our OBGYN, oncologist, radiologist, hematologist, etc., giving our baby a fighting chance to make it to term and still have his mom to watch him grow up. As wonderful as your nurses have been, spending weeks in the NICU was the last thing we wanted to add to this long journey. It’s tough balancing it all, and I felt like I was failing at most of it, so we prayed the shortest, most earnest prayer to God, “Please help us.” The next night, we had the joy of Elizabeth caring for our son and for us. She went above and beyond each night by working with our baby’s feeding and then educating us with invaluable teaching about his feeding, and she spent extra time assuring us of our son’s progress. I took the wisdom she shared about feeding and helpful tips about pumping and applied it that night. The next day, our son was taking his entire feed without the NG tube, not once but several times. We’d been struggling to get this part down, and Elizabeth was able to help me find handles on something that felt as shaky as my son trying to discover his new world.

Everything she taught us, we applied and have just been thankful for all the progress we’re seeing. She had a way of explaining things to us, who felt like they were drinking from a fire hydrant in a manner that was grounding and easy to grasp. That was huge to us. She could communicate with us in a way that we needed. My husband and I were able to sleep soundly after many nights of struggling; no loving parent wants to have to leave their baby. The level of care we knew he would receive with Elizabeth made that possible. We felt that she thought of our baby’s care from the broader lens of knowing that parents’ care was just as critical as what happens in the NICU.