November holds both Preemie and Adoption awareness days. Two days that hold a huge part of our hearts. The journey started in September 2011 when a teenage girl entered the hospital with abdominal pains. She quickly delivered two extremely tiny baby girls from a unknown pregnancy. The hospital estimated the babies to be between 22-24 weeks gestation. Kayla was 1lb 11oz and Kyla was 1lb 6 oz. Within a few hours of giving birth this young Mother knew she was unable to care for these precious angels high medical needs. She followed Michigan state law and used the Safe Delivery Act leaving the babies at the hospital to be cared for and find a forever home. The Babies were placed in the NICU at Hurley Pediatrics alone or were they? Their NICU family quickly became the girls' family. Sadly, Kyla passed away at 3 days old because of many health issues. Kayla suffered many scary diagnosis and surgeries with just her medical staff by her side. She was even transferred back and forth between hospitals.

The nurses took Kayla under their wings and showed her the love every child deserves to feel. One nurse in particular, became like a second Mama to Kayla. Nurse Veronica Bush was a life saver for Kayla during this time. She took pictures of her and created scrapbook pages to document this precious young life as she fought every day to live. She bought her clothes to go home from the hospital in. She was Kaylas Second Mama for 3 1/2 months.

Kayla celebrated her first Halloween and Thanksgiving in the NICU. But the time came for Kayla to leave the NICU and she had no where to go. That same time, I walked into the foster care agency I fostered with to deliver Christmas Cheesecakes and heard they were looking for a home for a extremely medical fragile baby. They hadn't considered us because we had a full house including 2 older infants and we had not signed up to do medically fragile babies. But I knew deep down in my heart that this was my daughter.

We were granted our request but many legal loop holes stood in our way from bringing Kayla home before Christmas. But we did not give up and called the court house and found a very compassionate clerk who got the courts to hear the case and allow Kayla to be discharged to us. Kayla came home with no tubes or medication and just 2 days before Christmas. But that didn't end our NICU experience.

The day after Christmas Kayla became extremely sick and was life flighted from our local hospital with the diagnosis of MRSA Pnemonia and not a great prognosis. She again spent her first NYE in the hospital but this time with her 3rd and final Mommy sitting by her side. We spent a lot of time in the hospital that first year together. Kayla was given a very bleak outlook for her future. We heard medial professionals tell us her quality of life was going to be so low. She would never sit up, crawl, walk, and talk. We found Nurse Veronica and were able to make that awesome connection and we finalized our adoption with our precious baby.

Today, Kayla is 6 years old and in Kindergarten. Kayla does have a laundry list of diagnosis and sees Doctors quite often. But Kayla has beat all of these odds. She doesn't just walk and talk but she runs and back talks us when she wants her way. Kayla is a true miracle and is loved by many.

We don't forget our precious Kyla and the 3 precious days we wish we had with her. And every year we celebrate her on their birthday and we talk to Kayla about her often. But our wonderful daughters represent the forgotten NICU babies who spend these hard days alone.