Traditionally, Thanksgiving columns elicit either gratitude from the perspective of what we possess or guilt for the things which possess us. As most of us celebrate Thanksgiving from these traditional perceptions, there is a place I visit in my job as a hospital chaplain that offers a unique perspective into thankfulness — a place where giving thanks is a constant occurrence — a place called the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
NICU, often pronounced “nick-you,” is a place where gratitude is measured in grams, and thankfulness becomes vital therapy. Among the whirl of pumps and respirators, hospital staff will squeeze through a tangled world of tubes, wires and monitors to deliver specialized care to the smallest people on the planet.
Step into this world with me today to witness vignettes of gratitude and perhaps find some perspective for giving thanks on this holiday.
As we push open the door into the NICU, your attention is immediately drawn toward a priest tracing the sign of the cross on a baby’s forehead with his finger damp from sterile water. He asks that God “bless this child in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” With that, the whimpers of the baby’s mother escape the temporary dam of her shuddering lips and she expresses thankfulness to the priest for his timely arrival.
In a private room, parents who are overcome with the anticipated death of their child express their thanks to a nurse willing to hold their baby in his final hours. Taking the baby into her arms, the nurse leans back in her rocking chair, saying, “It’s OK, sweetheart, I gotcha.”
Within minutes, monitors cry out their warnings as vitals drop below a life-sustaining level. The baby’s face begins to ashen and the nurse mumbles a prayer of thanks that his struggle is over.
On the other side, an unwed teenage mom finds a place on her daughter’s tiny hand not wrapped, poked or monitored, and whispers her words of thanksgiving into the baby’s palm. And, after placing these priceless words, she closes her baby’s fingers around it. Thankful she decided to keep the baby, she stands next to her father who is equally grateful that his daughter lived through a high-risk delivery.
Sitting beside another bassinet, two parents plan a funeral for one twin and a homecoming for the other. Ultrasound revealed they resided in the same amniotic sac and one twin was not doing well. Life was way too dicey for doctors to risk the lives of two babies, so the cord of the ailing twin was cut to allow the other to survive. The parents were holding the surviving twin with a double dose of thankful love.
Leaving the NICU, we encounter parents who have returned to thank the NICU staff. After spending months in the NICU, they were able to have a holiday homecoming with their infant.
” I’ll always be thankful,” mom says, “for the hours I spent observing what most parents never notice — the way he wiggled his toes, his smile and even his burp.”
So, as we approach this Thanksgiving Day, it’s appropriate to appreciate a little perspective and pause to give thanks for the tremendous and terribly precarious struggle that is required to establish and maintain this thing we call life.
This holiday, please remember the March of Dimes (www.modimes.org), which remains in the frontlines of the struggle to save babies from prematurity, birth defects, low birth weight and infant mortality.
