The NICU Experience: A Parent's Perspective

MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE unit was from the side of a gurney as I was being wheeled to the bedside of my newborn baby girl, Emily. It was only six hours after her birth, and already she had suffered several heart failures and required multiple chest tubes to help inflate her badly infected lungs. Born at 26 weeks gestational age, Emily and her twin sister, Brooke, had been taken immediately to the NICU, where Emily was now dying and Brooke was fighting to live.