I am the mother of a premature baby. I did not drink, I did not smoke, I did not do drugs, I took my vitamins and went to all my doctors appts. I did everything right and still had my twin boys at 23 weeks. Premature birth can happen to anyone at any time in their life. It can happen to you, your child, your grandchild, your best friend. It does not discriminate in who it chooses or why.

When you are the parent of a premature baby your whole world will stop. You will be told your baby won’t survive and if it does it will have lifelong health issues. You will be told it may never sit up, crawl, walk, see or hear. You will cry yourself to sleep at night and pray your baby lives another day. You will ask God to take you instead of your tiny child. You will fall to your knees every time your tiny baby stops breathing. You will stop sleeping and every time your phone rings your heart will drop to the floor because you fear the worse.

If your blessed enough to make it home with your baby, you will know way to many medical terms that no parent should ever have to know, you will know how to work an apnea machine, give infant CPR, you will learn sleeping doesn't exist because alarms go off all night long. You will be overprotective and overcautious because you know how close you had come so many times to losing your baby.

Having Kenny and Nick 17 weeks early has changed me as a person and Mother. I will never take the health of my children for granted again. Please remember all of the babies who didn't make it and all of the ones who have fought so hard to survive.

NOVEMBER 17th is National Prematurity Awareness day. Please wear purple to bring awareness to this issue so someone you love doesn't go home from the hospital empty handed.