I am eternally grateful to a small group of people that helped me after my first child was born: the nurses in the NICU.

An ultrasound at 35 weeks of pregnancy showed that my stubborn placenta hadn’t migrated out of the way of my cervix, and had stopped functioning. My son was measuring an entire month behind where he should have been, and the perinatologist thought my baby would survive better outside the womb than inside my body.

Then he asked when I had last eaten.

My mind swirled as I tried to wrap my head around delivering a small premature baby via c-section. Eight hours later, my son was delivered. All 4lbs 2oz. of him. Expected to be closer to three pounds, everyone was excited my son was bigger and healthier than anticipated.

Still, we didn’t feel we were out of the clear and prepared ourselves for the worst – that our son might not come home from the NICU until his expected due date.

So, there we were, in the hospital, hundreds of miles from family, alone.

Except we weren’t. Our lovely NICU nurses were a God send from the hour my son was born.

After my son was stable in his incubator, the nurses welcomed us to our son’s bedside. This wasn’t a hands-off nursery. We were expected to parent our child as soon as possible: to take our son’s temperature, change his diaper, try to swaddle him, even perform kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) for both me and my husband while my son was still tethered to machines, all done under the patient guidance of a NICU nurse.

I relied on those nurses probably more than I should have. They taught me how to breastfeed my son, how to burp him, change his diaper, and clean his umbilical cord. They also gave me tips to getting my, uh, digestive system back on track after surgery.

They were my stand-in mother, friend and therapist. They were my support system, helping me through the uncertainty of premature babies with grace and patience, and never once made me feel stupid for asking a question. They celebrated every ounce my son gained along with me. They filled me in on cute things he did while they held him in my absence, and knew him as well as I did, if not better.

One morning, we came in to the NICU to find a handmade sign for my son’s bed and I burst in to tears.

Made by one of the night nurses, it displayed my son’s name in bold, block letters, intricately made out of baseball bats, stackable rings, and crescent moons. That name sign came home with us and now sits, framed, over my now-eight year-old’s full-size bed.

It was that gesture that made me realize how much these nurses care for every single baby in that unit.

Even though my experience was nothing compared to those families that spend months in the NICU, I caught a glimpse at what these nurses provide: immeasurable comfort, reassurance, care and compassion.

Case it point: I cried the day we were discharged from the NICU. If I could have paid these nurses to come home with me, I would have.

Five years later, I took my son back to the hospital to donate the box of preemie clothes we had stored in a box, hoping to help other parents who were as unprepared as we were.

While the some of the staff had changed, I recognized a good number of nurses, still soldiering on, taking gentle care of preemies and performing what I can only imagine is an extremely difficult but rewarding job.

A nurse graciously took my box of onesies and admired how big my son had gotten, with a generosity I hadn’t expected. Even though I didn’t know her, I had to hug her and thank her for keeping my son’s stay in the NICU a healthy one.

As we walked out of the NICU, I glanced up above the beds of the current patients, all of them equipped with their own handmade signs, and prayed their parents would be able to take them home and frame them one day, too.