When you are pregnant with a baby who is supposed to die, you do a lot of dreaming. First, there comes the wishful thinking. They must have been wrong. There can’t be something so terribly wrong with my baby. Then, there comes the desolation. I am losing my baby who I love with my entire being. In my case, there was finally a determination. I knew that I was going to fight with everything I had to prove those doctors wrong. I was going to have the baby who survived.

I dreamed of the day that my baby would be born alive. I dreamed that she would cry loudly and prove that her lungs worked despite every prediction. But they didn’t work. She had to be intubated and on the oscillator that provided oxygen gently to her lungs with nitric oxide pumping in to help open her underdeveloped lungs. On the oscillator, I was unable to hold her. All I could do was put my hand on my beautiful baby and read to her every day. So I dreamed of holding her. And I did get to hold her when she was two weeks old. A beautiful nurse brought a chair and told me that today was the day to hold my baby. 

When that dream came true, I started to dream of her being extubated so that she was able to make noises. And she was finally extubated. I dreamed of her coming off of the CPap machine and off of the high flow nasal cannula. I dreamed of my baby breathing on her own. I dreamed of her smiling and moving and living. Each dream seemed so unattainable. 

My biggest dream was to bring my baby home and that dream seemed the most unattainable. I received many different estimates of our homecoming date. They predicted six to eight months in the hospital. But when we had been there for four and a half months, a nurse practitioner came in and told us that we were going home next week. I didn’t believe it. How could my biggest dream come true? The day came and I kept waiting for the hospital to change its mind. They didn’t. 

I have so many other dreams for my baby. I dream that she will eat all of her food on her own. I dream of the day that she will receive a new kidney. I dream of her having a normal life. And those dreams don’t seem as unattainable now because I have dreamed the biggest dreams and they have come true. There are days that feel impossible but I will never stop dreaming of a better life for my daughter and babies like her.