In the fall of 2011, my husband and I were expecting our second baby—a girl! Our firstborn, Noah, was a full-term, healthy, and active two-year-old boy, and we couldn’t wait to welcome his baby sister.
The day she was born came unexpectedly. I went in for my routine check-up at 30 weeks with seemingly no complications, and after a whirlwind day at the hospital—where we discovered that her belly was measuring small and that she wasn’t moving—her heart rate began to decelerate and she was born by emergency C-section that very night—10 weeks early, weighing in at 2.5 pounds of pure sweetness. Before I could hold her or see her or even hear her cry, she was given a breathing tube and was whisked away to the NICU. There she remained miraculously stable and well for the next seven weeks.