Yul was born 6 weeks (almost 7 weeks) early and was in the NICU for a month. The NICU nurses did such a good job of taking care of him, and I wanted to show them how he looks now and how well he is doing. So we made this video that hopefully they will see.  At first I was thinking of going to the NICU to take some photos to them, but I thought maybe not all of them will get to see them, or I may not even be able to go in as rules are pretty strict there (for good reason). Also a video like this can be a way of thanking all NICU nurses.

While he was in the NICU it was a very difficult time. I had the emergency c-section and then went home without a baby… there were some days that I cried for hours. I was also pumping every 3 hours so I had milk to take to the hospital for him. I think I’ve blocked most of those feelings out of my mind, but looking at this footage, it all came back. We could usually only see him for about 30 minutes a day, and it was heartbreaking. It was so hard for us to have a baby and then to not be able to even hold him yet, it was difficult.

Modern medicine is amazing though, and babies born a lot earlier than Yul can now survive and do well. I wanted to publicly recognize how important everyone working in the NICU is. But in particular I wanted to highlight how important the nurses are. Doctors are amazing of course, but we didn’t see them much and it was the nurses we came to know. When the majority of nurses are usually women, their work can be undervalued, especially in the way that care of babies and children is undervalued in society. So this video is to show how important they are and to thank them for their work.