This entry was posted on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under The Preemie Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to the second installment of The Preemie Adventure. This personal and inspirational series is a collection of real-life stories from real-life parents that deals with the emotional roller coaster associated with pre-term birth.
This installment comes from a good friend of ours, Jeremy Biser. Jeremy runs a brilliant site entitled Discovering Dad, which was founded in 2007.
The objective of Discovering Dad is to build connections between dads and encourage fathers to get involved in their kids lives. It is also meant to help fathers establish their own voice in society as something more than the ’second’ parent.
We appreciate Jeremy’s story, and hope you draw as much inspiration from it as we did.
Our daughter, Caitlin, was born at 35 weeks, and she weighed 5 pounds 6 ounces. We were a little surprised at her early arrival, but our 2-year-old son was born at 36 weeks, so we had started to prepare for the possibility of another preemie a week or so prior to Caitlin’s arrival.
When she was first born, we anticipated a short stay in the NICU; however, we were not prepared for a 24-day battle with a severe intestinal infection. A few days after birth, Caitlin was diagnosed with Necrotizing Enterocolitis, which had the potential of rupturing her intestines and requiring major surgery. Fortunately, the disease was caught early, and she was a little fighter. It was an emotional roller coaster for us, but looking back on it now, it brought our family even closer together.
We are so thankful for the blessings we have, especially our three kids. Today, at 3-months-old, Caitlin is a happy and healthy baby. She went from being in the 5th percentile for weight and height when we brought her home to the 50th percentile in both at her 3 month check up. Every time I look at her, my heart swells with joy that she is a part of our life.
You can subscribe to Jeremy’s feed here.
If you would like to submit your preemie stories and photos for inclusion in The Preemie Adventure, drop us a comment, or email us at matt@redsparks.com.
Aline & Matt
October 5th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Must have been an incredibly difficult time. But how blessed to have pulled through it. How is it that our kids can put us through the best and seemingly worst of times. And you have a great site Jeremy, keep it going strong. (This sites totally cool too:))
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October 6th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thanks for running this series Matt and Aline! Caitlin is doing great now, and we’re extremely thankful! She’s close to sitting up on her own, and she is babbling up a storm. Very cute! Still hard to imagine where we were with her just a few short months ago.
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October 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Caitlin is absolutely adorable! I’m so happy everything turned out so well for you. God is good!
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