Our first act of kindness was, in my mind, a gift from the girls to other little ones.
I pumped while Rorie and Josie were in the NICU. It brought me joy and comfort to know that there was a tangible thing I could do to help them. They weren’t able to take very much milk, but they did love it – one of our favorite memories is seeing them suck happily on a Q-tip dipped in milk! Because of their small size, we quickly developed a surplus of milk. At one point, Josie’s nurse asked me to start bringing the milk home because we had filled up much more than our allotted space in the NICU freezer.
When the girls died, we were left with two freezers full of milk. We donated this to Mothers’ Milk Bank, an organization that provides human milk to fragile infants across the country. Human milk provides significant benefits for babies, especially preemies who need the extra nutrients and antibodies that can’t be found in formula.
In the headquarters of Mothers’ Milk Bank in Arvada, CO, there is a memorial Aspen tree dedicated to the babies and parents who have donated milk after loss. Each gold leaf includes the name and birthdate of a baby. They also sent us these gold leaves in honor of the girls; the leaves now sit by their urns in the memory cabinet we created for them.
I pray that other NICU babies were strengthened by this act, and we cherish the beauty of the leaves created in honor of Aurora and Josephine.
