Our son became known as the Ginger Warrior at about 40 hours old. His NICU nurse said he was a fighter. I replied, yes he’s my ginger warrior. And just like that, his new identity was born! He looked so small and fragile in the isolette, hooked up to monitors and iv’s and the vent. I remember stroking his head for a second. Too afraid to wake him or disturb him. We found out more that day about some of the other issues he might have going on. He had some narrowing of his aorta, his inferior vena cava wasn’t working right so his lower extremities were dusky and had poor blood pressure and perfusion, he had an ASD and VSD, his spine X-ray showed some anomalies. It was then that I’m so glad I now saw him as a warrior. He would need all the fight he could muster to get through the next few days, weeks, months as we all learned more and watched more of how he coped and developed. So many potentially serious issues all piled into one tiny body. I started having increasing anxiety and panic about his chances.
But I refused to let the feelings of doubt overcome me. I’m not a religious person by any means but that day I did start praying to whoever was in charge of this circus to keep an eye on this little one and keep him in the ring.
The Ginger Warrior 