Good News Mama!

Bye Bye NICU!  Having Evangeline home can be described as two polar opposites. On one end, we as parents are elated with joy and happiness! We waited so long for the NICU Journey to end and we were just so relieved we didn’t have to go back to the hospital! It was such a long process to have to find a parking spot, show our visitor/parent pass downstairs, go upstairs, sign in, scrub up to our elbows for at least a minute, then put everything we are carrying into a pillow case. Every.Single.Day. When you’re in the NICU, you don’t have much privacy either. So once we took Evangeline home, it was such a shock to have peace and quiet. To go to bed and to see her there next to us was such a surreal and pleasant adjustment. And for the first time ever, we heard her snore and grunt and sigh (it’s practically impossible to hear any of the preemies do this in the NICU bc there’s always something going on, whether it be beeping alarms, nurses chatting, or doctors doing their roun...

In the NICU, a surprising majority of the nurses who care over our baby ask us, "How did you choose the name Evangeline? I love it!" We smile because that's a sweet compliment for us as newbie parents. Kevin actually had never heard of the name before, but I first heard it when I was at Pastor Greg Laurie's Harvest Church in Riverside with my best friend Zerah when we were 19. We were surprised at the beginning of Sunday service when they said that they were dedicating a baby to God! I had never witnessed a baby dedication before, and the hope was that the baby would come to saving faith when she became older and eventually get baptized. There were these two happy parents who went up holding the cutest little baby! She was wearing a cute little pink headband with a giant flower and a white dress. I remember the man introduced the family, and said, "This baby's name is Evangeline, which means 'good news' or 'gospel'..how wonderful!" I was ...