Wednesday, February 18th it happened, my sister was going into labor. I walked into her room, where her water had broken. It was everywhere, like it had rained in her room. It was like there was a big rain puddle on the oak colored hard wood floor. How could this be happening, she’s only 28 weeks pregnant? I yelled for our mom, she came running down the stairs. Emma, my sister, changed her clothes into light pink pajama pants, and a white shirt. My mom called the doctor and off to the hospital we went, worried.

It should have only taken us thirty minutes to get to the hospital, instead it took over an hour. There was a blizzard, well, I don’t know if it was actually a blizzard.  It was snowing hard enough to be though! We couldn’t really see to drive, but we had to get to the hospital as fast as we could. We got to Chambersburg hospital around 7:30 in the night. We had a very nice nurse with blond hair a pink and purple scrubs on, they had butterflies on them. We told the nurse how many months pregnant Emma was, and she said she would have to be transferred to Harrisburg hospital because she was having the baby over a month early. So we waited for the ambulance to come take her to Harrisburg.

When we got to Harrisburg, The doctor with blue scrubs on examined my sister. He said she had to stay at the hospital on bed rest for as long she could keep the baby in. She was on floor eight room eleven, there was a very pretty view of the Susquehanna River. Although, it was so cold outside the river was frozen over. The doctor said, it was safer for the baby to be inside of my sister than outside, unless Emma started showing any signs on infection.

Thursday went very well, everything was fine. No signs on infection and the baby boy wasn’t trying to come out. On Friday, around 6 in the evening she started getting a fever. We were all so worried, we didn’t know if the baby would be okay or not. The doctor induced her, because a fever in one of the first signs of infection. Thirty minutes after her being induced, she started pushing! My mother and I by her side, all the doctors surrounding, ready for the baby to be born. Nurses ready to rush him to the NICU. Only five minutes of pushing, and baby boy was out. At 9:42 pm my nephew, Avian, was born.

We didn’t really have time to welcome Avian to the world, because he had to go to the NICU, but the nurses and doctors said he was going to be okay. They said he was big for being so early.  They said we could go to the NICU to see around eleven. Well, we didn’t get the call from the nurses that we could go down until around two in the morning.

Seeing him with all the machines on and around him was so sad, but it’s amazing how they can keep a baby alive. The nurse aid that he would be just fine and would be able to come home in a couple of months. After 73 days of being in the NICU and two brain surgeries, Avian finally got to come home. He has taught me very many things, and has made me a better person. He had a shunt put in on the left side of his head, because the he had fluid on his brain and it wasn’t draining. There is a high chance of him having cerebral palsy, but I still love him the same. One of the main things he taught me was to never give up, because he could have given up at any moment, but he kept fighting.