
Hello, our names are Spencer and Katie. We are the parents of a new baby girl. Unfortunately she came into this world prematurely at only 30 weeks old. Her mother had experienced a massive blood clot forming on her placenta and if we hadn't gotten to the hospital in time Katie and maybe even the baby would've perished. Luck and faith got us through it all and we all persevered. After being in the hospital for only a few hours Astrid Diana was born and Katie's life was saved. They had to pump her tiny lungs with air but after a few moments she began to breathe. She was hooked to a ventilator and feeding tube and was rushed to the NICU to get hooked up to all these machines and wires. It was the happiest and saddest we've ever felt at the same time. Seeing her like that definitely took alot of strength. But less that 24 hours she began to breath by herself which is a huge deal. After sitting in the hospital for days and talking to each other it really started to sink in about how terribly unprepared we were and thats putting it lightly. We basically have nothing for her. And since she's a preemie she's going to need double the attention and the care that normal babies will have. Not only is she going to spend 2 months inside a plastic aquarium but that means our jobs, our family, friends and our lives will be put to the back burner just because we will have to spend most our time in the hospital. Katie was placed on mandatory 6 weeks bed rest but because this is America(3rd worst country in the world for maternity leave benefits) we won't have enough support and all those benefits they talk about like 12 weeks paid fully is only designated for certain companies and certain people so because we don't fit their insane requirements we will be lucky to get half pay for 6 weeks. And even if we were able to have the opportunity it won't nearly be enough. Between Not having a vehicle (since our car had spontaneously died on the side of the road in June 2021) 2 months of hospital bills, taking care of her 4 year old brother, and trying to make our normal ends meet we are going to be drowning in debt and bills with no way of getting to and from the hospital. After sitting here in the hospital for days all these thoughts just started to spin out of control in our minds and we started to panic. It's going to be the hardest time of our entire lives. We weren't sure where to turn. Nobody at all talks about how to do this when your baby comes early. There's no books, there's no government program, there's nothing. Just what you find on Google search. Which isn't much. How do you prepare for something that you have no idea how to deal with? Support groups will only help us mentally but thats the only thing available to parents like ourselves in this unfortunate situation. We aren't ones to ask for hand-outs in fact if you know either of us personally you'd know we are a hard working-class family and we have a hard time asking for help so this is a huge deal for us. We aren't looking for exactly 10 grand thats alot but we also wouldn't want to short ourselves considering the costs of medical bills and everything else we have going on. Whatever anyone chooses to donate to this cause we would be eternally grateful for whether it be 1 penny or 100 dollars it would be the absolute world to all of us and we won't have enough words to describe how thankful we are for your donation. Please send all your positive energy to our Astrid Diana she's going to have a very long road ahead and we will be right there along side of her the whole way!