Candice's Story
In Her Own Words
We are Mississippi transplants from Texas. We moved in 2019 after our son’s discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and first brain surgery. Growing our family involved two years of infertility followed by successful IVF where we became pregnant with our son. His name means “Mighty as a Bear” and “God hears.”
He was born extremely premature at 27 weeks and spent 79 days in NICU. Shortly after his birth, routine NICU scans showed a hole in his heart as well as a cyst in his brain. In the past 3 years our son has undergone one heart surgery, two brain surgeries, tubes in his ears and requires medication to endure his frequent imaging exams to monitor his conditions.
Due to Barrett’s early birth, surgeries and the two years of Covid-19 isolation, he has multiple developmental delays – speech, fine and gross motor, as well as limited socialization. Over time, our family has developed a team of health professionals to support, guide and instruct us on how to care for our amazing son. I often joke that my nursing background prepared me to be a care coordinator, social worker, pharmacist and therapy assistant for our son.
The past few years have been some of the hardest experiences we have endured. We understand the pain of infertility, the fear of losing one’s child, as well as the isolation that comes with having a preemie and special needs child. We have also experienced the joy of our son reaching new milestones, the bewilderment of physicians when their prognosis and statistics for our son changes at each visit, and the miraculous power of prayer. What we have learned through this journey as parents is this:
God is good even when circumstances don’t feel good.