Nothing prepares you for it.
For the sight of your baby lying so small, so still, surrounded by wires and machines that breathe for them, that keep their heart beating when it can’t do it alone.

Nothing prepares you for the sound — the steady beeping of monitors that become your new lullaby, the hum of machines that fill the silence where laughter should be.

When you imagine bringing your child into the world, you think of soft blankets, sleepy cuddles, midnight feedings, the warmth of tiny fingers wrapped around yours.

You don’t imagine sterile rooms, whispered prayers, or doctors saying the words “critical” and “monitor closely.”
You don’t imagine living your days in the rhythm of beeps, alarms, and heart rate numbers that suddenly mean more than anything in the world.

That is the life of a parent in the ICU.
A life where love and fear live side by side.
Where hope is fragile — but never gone.

Every day becomes a war between courage and despair.

You learn what every number means, what every sound might signal.
You read the nurses’ faces before they speak — their small smiles, their pauses, their quick glances at the screen.

You start to celebrate what others might never notice.
A stable night.
A drop in oxygen support.
A feeding tube that finally stays down.

These are victories now.
Tiny, fragile, monumental victories.

And then there are the moments when fear takes over — when alarms sound, when doctors rush in, when your baby’s chest rises slower than it should.
You freeze.
You pray.

You hold your breath until they breathe again.

You sit in the same chair for hours, hands trembling but steady on their tiny fingers, whispering words of love they can’t yet understand — but you hope, somehow, they can feel.

You tell them stories of home.
You promise them there will be sunlight again.
You promise them they are safe, even when your heart feels like it’s breaking.

CHD — Congenital Heart Disease

— changes everything.
It strips you down to the rawest parts of love and fear.
It teaches you that every heartbeat is a miracle.
Every sigh, every flutter of eyelids, every small movement — a gift you’ll never take for granted again.

You become stronger than you ever thought you could be — not because you want to be, but because your baby needs you to be.
You learn to live hour by hour.

To hold onto faith even when you’re too tired to pray.
To trust in miracles, because sometimes, they are all you have left.

And in the middle of it all — through the wires, the tears, the exhaustion — there is love.

A fierce, unbreakable, breathless kind of love.
The kind that hurts and heals at the same time.
The kind that rebuilds you every single day.

For every parent sitting beside their baby’s bed in PICU — staring at the monitors, whispering through tears — you are not alone.

Your strength, your love, your hope — they matter.
They are the heartbeat your child feels, even through the noise.

For Leo’s family, this has been the hardest journey of their lives.

But love has been their anchor.
Faith their refuge.
And Leo — brave, beautiful Leo — has been their light.

He continues to fight, his small body battling every breath, every heartbeat a testament to courage.

Right now, Leo is still in intensive care.
Still on the ventilator.
Still fighting.

But he is not fighting alone.
His parents are there — holding his hand, whispering hope into every heartbeat.

And around them stands a world of love — friends, family, strangers — all praying for one more miracle.

❤️ For Leo. For every child with CHD.
For every parent who learns to love fiercely through fear.

There is hope — in every single beat. ❤️