Having a baby in the NICU was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through in my life. Scratch that- I will say it was THE hardest thing. You never can quite grasp how it feels to be a mom until you are one. Take that and immediately test it by having your child in intensive care to begin their life, and wow. It’s something that I would wish on no one and wouldn’t be able to explain the feelings I had if I tried. If you haven’t followed our story thus far, you can read up on Clara’s birth story here. In short, she was born at…

  My pregnancy was really easy. I didn’t have morning sickness, I didn’t gain a ton of weight, I didn’t have swelling, wasn’t too uncomfortable, and that all continued right up until we were close to the end. Right around 34-35 weeks, my blood pressure decided it wanted to act up. I did some initial testing for pre-eclampsia and they came back negative, but after another week of high blood pressure, my doctor decided to do the test over again. In just a week, my protein levels quadrupled and my blood pressure continued to rise. The night before I was sent to labor and delivery I had a feeling it…