INDIANAPOLIS — Home for the holidays.
That's the goal for many families over the next few days. But for families with newborns in a neonatal intensive care unit, spending baby's first Christmas apart can be tricky. For those with little ones still in the hospital, staff there work hard to spread around some Christmas cheer.
Inside the NICU at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital, it's lunchtime for baby Nora. Mom Tara Flowers gives her two-month-old daughter a bottle while keeping a close eye on her siblings — Frankie and Ari — nearby.
Born Oct. 4, the triplets have spent their whole lives — 80 days — living in the NICU.
"It's getting closer and closer to 100 and I was hoping they'd be home before this but, it's OK. They're growing and doing what they should be doing," Tara said.
Tara delivered Ari, Nora and Frankie early on in her pregnancy. Very early, in fact. But her doctors cautioned it was a necessary step to protect the three children because little Frankie had stopped growing.
"The doctors knew exactly what they were doing," Tara said. "Thank God, because it could have been a lot worse. Heavens, I don't even want to think about it."
Frankie's siblings both weighed more than two pounds at birth (Ari, 2 pounds 14 ounces and Nora, 2 pounds 10 ounces). Frankie was born one pound, 15 ounces. Over the past two and a half months, though, the close care given by doctors and nurses in the NICU has helped the babies grow bigger and become healthier.
Karla Fisher, an RN in the Peyton Manning Children's Hospital, said the work happening here is critical, often lifesaving.
"A lot of them, without us, they wouldn't survive. And that's also true of our outlying hospitals, those hospitals are just not equipped to take care of a teeny, tiny baby or a very sick newborn baby," Fisher said.
Fisher said this NICU gets a lot of transports, infants coming in from hospitals all around the state to get vital care needed for newborns.
The days spent here are long, but for Tara, not long enough. She'll spend at least eight hours with her children every day before making the hour-long drive back to Anderson to her home and husband. Her husband, a firefighter, spends as much time at the NICU as he can, Tara said.
"Oh yeah, extremely hard to leave. Yeah, I don't like it at all. But I just keep thinking one day they're going to go home with me and then I won't have to leave them," Tara said.
Monitors over the triplets' cribs offer constant images and comfort when mom and dad are so far away.
"We check that at night, like right before I go to bed I look at it," she said. "Just knowing the night nurses and it's such a comfort knowing they're in good care."
Splitting time between home and the NICU is hard for any family, made even harder over the holidays.
"Every parent in here would much rather be at home with a healthy baby. So we try to find little things that kind of make it more homey, more normal and help them celebrate," Fisher said.
Decking out Christmas trees with medical equipment and turning prints of tiny feet into ornaments, the families and staff here find ways to make these tough times a little more merry and bright.
"Those little mementos like 'baby's first Christmas', even though they're not spending it at home, they still have their first Christmas and we still celebrate that for them. It makes them feel a little bit more normal," Fisher said.
PHOTOS: Santa visits NICU babies at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital
For Tara, she and her family will spend much of their holiday sitting by her infants' sides.
"I'll go and spend time with my family in the morning and then I'll come down here and spend time with my now-NICU family," Tara said.
Yet, still hoping for a Christmas gift she can't find under a tree.
"I was really hoping I'd have at least two home by Christmas. But they're just kind of taking their own little time and I've just tried to be as optimistic about it as I can be," she said.
She's optimistic with good reason. Nora, Ari and Frankie are getting stronger, and bigger every day. It's giving her hope that soon they can all come home after spending the babies' first Halloween, Thanksgiving, and soon Christmas apart.
"It's really hard," she said. "I think at least Frankie will be here New Year's Eve into January. But I hope the other two aren't! Fingers crossed."
Wishing, hoping and so ready to have the whole family all home together in 2023.
"Yeah, I'm hoping," Tara said. "Really hoping."