Why March?

It is already March for Babies week! According to their website there will be over 7 million people participating or donating across the country. This Saturday we will be there with our matching t-shirts marching for Team Noah! Even my grandparents are going to come. How many kids can say their great-grandparents did that? They are pretty cool! :)
I already mentioned how March of Dimes research led to surfactant therapy, which Noah recieved multiple times.The other main result March of Dimes claims for their research is nitric oxide therapy. Nitric oxide is naturally produced by the body and it is sometimes given to help expand the blood vessels in a babies lungs and is thought to help prevent both lung and brain defects.
Thankfully this is something Noah did not have to experience. And if I am remembering right, it is a big and scary looking machine. There was a baby next to us that was on it for awhile. Of course we couldn't ask about that particular baby, but we did ask about the machine, because it was big and scary. (I thought I remember the answer being that it was nitric oxide, but after reading the descriptions on the March of Dimes site I admit I'm not 100% sure. Keep reading though; I have a point.)
I didn't really connect too many dots then, but one day the big machine and that baby weren't there anymore. It is possible that he got moved to a different pod. But it is also possible that a mother had to say goodbye to her baby there in that little NICU pod-- without ever being able to take him home, without ever being able to nurse him, without ever being able to rock him to sleep in his new nursery, without ever being able to show him to friends and family.
Not every baby gets to go home. Not every story ends with "you can't even tell he was ever in the NICU."
And that is why March.