Started life small... but living life big!
Caroline Babin was born at 30 weeks weighing 3lbs 11oz. She recieved care in the NICU for 77 days. Caroline is now 19 months old!
Tell us about your “now” photo and how your child is living life big!
Sweet Caroline is continuing to thrive!!! She can now sit up, and is a hard, cheerful worker with all of her daily exercises!! She just learned how to throw things which she thinks is hilarious haha! She can feed herself, and is so interactive. She loves to make people laugh, and has a great sense of humor. Her favorite thing is to be with people and blow kisses :) - she never meets a stranger!! She goes to PT and OT weekly, and also does speech therapy and Early Intervention. She is a busy girl! :) She is a little ray of sunshine and a constant reminder of the Lord’s miraculous power!!!
How did the NICU and Melissa’s Fund help ensure milestones like this were possible for your child and family? What does that mean to you?
We could never thank the Huntsville Hospital NICU or Melissa’s Fund enough for providing the most excellent care and resources for Caroline. She scored a 0 on the APGAR test for signs of life when she was born, so the incredible doctors and nurses began CPR on her. She again scored a 0 after 5 minutes of CPR, but they kept going, and the Lord brought her back to life the 7th minute!!!! They didn’t know if she would make it through the weekend, but now here she is thriving thanks to the incredible NICU team and Melissa’s Fund for providing what Caroline needed to survive. She was on a ventilator and then CPAP the first couple of days of her life which the Lord used to literally keep her alive. She was also in a giraffe incubator bed for a while before she was able to regulate her own body temperature and she was fed through an NG Tube before she was able to take bottles. This vital equipment allowed her to have the nutrition and environment she needed to survive and grow. Our pediatrician shared with us that SO many lives have been saved since the incubators were created, so we are so thankful to The Melissa’s Fund for helping provide both of these items that were used by the Lord to sustain her life. She wouldn’t have been able to make it without them!! We were also so thankful for the NICView bedside cameras that the Melissa’s Fund provided. We loved that we could see our precious girl when we couldn’t be there in person with her!! We would log on sometimes in the middle of the night and it was so comforting to our hearts to get to see her sleeping or moving around on there :). We are so grateful to have had that!! We want to say THANK YOU to everyone who gives and makes it possible for these precious little miracles to survive!!! Your donations are going directly towards life-saving work!!
Why does your family support our NICU through Miracle Bash and Melissa’s Fund?
Without the NICU, our precious daughter wouldn’t be here. While she was in the NICU, Caroline needed a ventilator, CPAP, blood transfusions, blood and oxygen monitors, incubator beds, feeding machines, and many other life-saving tools the NICU team had access to. Each of these things were a blessing in our family’s life, as the Lord used those to keep our daughter alive. She simply wouldn’t be here today without those things!! So we are so honored and thankful to get to be a small part in supporting the NICU through the Miracle Bash so that other babies can receive the same life-saving care our daughter did!!!
What is a special/fond memory you have of your time in the NICU?
I will never forget the day we got to hold precious Caroline for the first time. She was a couple weeks old at that point, so we couldn’t wait to hold her. One of the sweet NICU nurses carefully got her out of the giraffe bed all wrapped up in her swaddle, and handed her to us in a rocking chair at bedside. I immediately starting crying out of thankfulness as I looked at her. My heart was overwhelmed with gratitude knowing that we were only getting that special moment because of the miracle God did in bringing her back to life. We were (and still are!!!) so filled with thankfulness for the doctors and nurses who immediately rushed us back for an emergency C-section, who immediately performed CPR on her without giving up, and for each of the doctors and nurses who gave her everything she needed from that point forward to continue to survive and thrive. They truly loved her like their own. I loved getting to see the nurses who cared for her along the journey and getting daily updates on how much weight she gained, how much she was able to eat, etc. and I always looked forward to those updates so much. They had a whiteboard by her bed they would write encouraging notes on too!! Caroline’s 2nd nurse who cared for her would continually take time out of her day when she could to hold her and truly love her as if she were her own. In a time that was difficult in many ways, the nurses, doctors, and events coordinator made it a warm, inviting place that became a second home to us. We spent several holidays there - Christmas, New Years, and Valentine’s Day, all of which they would decorate her crib and leave goodies and just make us feel so seen and special!!! We could never thank everyone who takes care of these little miracles enough for the sacrificial work they do day in and day out!!!
Additional Remarks:
I just want to encourage each person who donates even a dollar towards the Melissa’s Fund, that I have seen with my own eyes and benefitted with my own daughter’s life from the incredible, life-saving equipment that the Melissa’s Fund has provided for our NICU. It was such a comfort to me when I couldn’t be with her, knowing that she was in the best hands possible with the best equipment that God was using to keep her alive. And for that, we could never thank you enough!!!
