This nurse is everything that a DAISY award recipient is and MORE.  She was my daughter’s NICU primary nurse.  As any family that has navigated through the NICU will say, your first few hours and days within the unit are very overwhelming and perhaps even suffocating, as parents.  From the moment we stepped foot in the NICU, this nurse made everything that was out of the norm bearable.  She quickly established a healthy relationship not only with my daughter, but also my husband and I as new parents who had millions of questions.  Any question we had was answered in its entirety and in a way that did not make us feel like we were outsiders looking in, but almost as if we were equals.  As parents, medical terminology can often be intimidating, but this nurse always did an exceptional job at putting things in terms that were understandable and relatable.  This nurse truly took on the role of being our daughter’s primary nurse without any hesitation.  She treated our daughter as if she were her own by loving her when her father and I couldn’t be there through the night, by taking time out of her day to make mementos using her footprints every week that we are there, dressing her bed in the cutest bedding, writing notes to us to read when we wake up in the mornings, decorating her bassinet with lights and décor through the holidays, and by being genuinely excited when she hit a milestone, big or small.  If there was someone that a nursing program could use a prime example of what a nurse should be like, it is this nurse.  From her professionalism to her bedside manner, to her patient / parent-education, to her passion, to her exceptional care, she is what nursing should be all about!
    
We were in the NICU for 102 days, never once did I ever see this nurse waiver in her positivity and hope that we would get to take our daughter home as a healthy baby!  In the 102 days of our NICU stay, our bond to this nurse only grew stronger with her as we now have a beautiful friendship outside those hospital walls.  This nurse was placed in our lives not just as our daughter’s NICU nurse, but now as a part of our family!  Our daughter will grow up knowing her as “Aunt” and we can’t wait to see their relationship flourish!
    
I could go on and on about every single thing that our nurse did that saved not only my daughter's life medically, but she also saved my husband and my sanity and made sure we were ALL taken care of!  There will never be enough gratitude that we can truly convey to express just how much we will forever be grateful that she always went above and beyond for my family. She is what a nurse should be, and she is, with or without this award, the BEST of the best!  Thank you, we love you!