My twin daughters were in the NICU for 42 days and 60 days. As you can imagine, I was already on edge, having one baby home and one still in the NICU, 2 hours away from home. The night before the second twin was supposed to be discharged I was on the way to see my baby in the NICU and I received a call from the NICU that I would soon realize was bad bad news. I answer, and the first thing I hear is, "Hi mom, this is Ashley, your daughter's nurse". That’s when it hit me this was not going to be a good phone call. My response is, "Is everything okay?" That’s when she tells me my daughter is having deadly bradycardia events every time she eats. This made no sense. She was fine. She was supposed to come home tomorrow. I cried that to her. She explained that she understood that and first thing tomorrow they are going to start running tests to figure out what is going on. When I arrived, bawling my eyes out, she sat there with me and listened to me cry about how I was having a mom day and didn’t call to check in on her all day and how guilty I felt. She assured me I was still a good mom and talked to me until I calmed down. She assured me they were going to figure it out and get my baby home. She said she knows this is hard for me, but it’s what is best for my baby, and she will be here if I need anything at all.

A few days later, when my baby was ready to go home, everything went bad again, and while I was sitting by her crying, Ashley came over and talked with me and assured me everything was going to be okay, and that they were doing everything they could to figure this out. A few more days went by, and she came and checked on us EVERY NIGHT, even if she hadn’t been our nurse for over two weeks at this point. This particular night, the night before she was supposed to go home she came and talked to me. She said, "This is it, Mama, you made it!" I started crying because I was so sad to leave her. She was the best thing that happened to us the whole 60 days we were there. She gave us her all and fought for us to get the answers we needed. She stuck by my side and was the support I didn’t know I needed during that time. This woman is the best NICU nurse you will ever meet!! She deserves the world!!!