Unfortunately, I have a little bit in common with her, and we're part of a club that's not the most fun club to be a part of, and it is a club of parents who's went to a hospital to have a baby, only to leave without the baby because the baby needed to spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit otherwise known as nick You.
For me, it was just twelve long days.
For my guest, it was one hundred and forty seven long days. Stephanie Hawser, welcome to the show.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. And I'd love to say, you know, any amount of the time in the NICKU is really long. You know, it can be one hundred and forty seven days or even just two days.
Well a lot.
Tell me about your son. What happened? He came in very very early.
Yeah, So in twenty nineteen, our son, zeb was born at just twenty three weeks, just stationed just over halfway through pregnancy. He was given less than a one percent chance of survival through birth, and as time went on, and you know, he was given a ninety five percent chance with all the complications of being born so impossibly early, ninety five percent chance of never walking, never talking, never eating or breathing on his own.
They expected that he would be blind.
These are all very typical outcomes of babies born so early, and and Zev was just a miraculous case. From go he came out rying on no lungs, and from there we knew he was stronger than we thought.
One hundred and forty seven days. I can't even imagine how much did he weigh when he was born.
Veev weighed one pound four ounces at birth. He was small enough to fit into the palm of my hands, so if you can believe it, he was so tiny, but he was a fighter. And through our time in the Nick, you note, through those one hundred and forty seven days, that can be a really hopeless time. You know, that's a place, just like you said, you know, the Niki is really hard, no matter how long you spend there.
It's full of two things at once.
It's the best place you can be for the care of your children and the hardest place to be as a parent watching your child go through such hard things.
And for us, you know, those one hundred and forty seven days.
We found hope in just believing that no matter what came from Zev's extreme prematurity.
You know, whether he lived or died or never, never, never, we would.
Stand in a place of belief that whatever came from this, we would experience a big and full and beautiful life for him, whatever that life looked like, and that we as his parents would experience a big and beautiful life for ourselves too. And now we bring that same hope and healing and possibility to other families who are experiencing the journey of the Niku through for those are nonprofit.
And I will tell you, it is the scariest thing ever to walk in to. And you've just had a baby, right, And if you're the mom, you've just had a baby, you feel like you've just had a baby. And then you see this this little human that you've created, and they're attached to fifty million wires and there's tubes, and there's an IV in their foot, and it's just the most incredibly overwhelming experience. And like I said, I only
went through it for twelve days. And because my daughter was almost full term, she was just in fetal distress, so we delivered her a couple weeks early. She was this ginormous eight pound baby in a room where I started calling them teacup babies. I would have referred to your son as a teacup baby because they look like they could just fit into a teacup. So tiny, so
so tiny. So there's all these machines, yeah, and you don't know what they do, and it's just there's so much and I would have loved anyone like you to be able to help walk us through that.
So tell me about four those.
Yeah, I think you know exactly what you're saying. You know, the shock of the niku can be really intense for people, especially when you have these little you know, we call them micro premies babies born before twenty six weeks. They have all of these machines hooked up. You're not quite sure what's going on.
You know.
We couldn't hold Zev for month, you know that, And even when we.
Did, it was so touch and go. You know, Zev was.
Going through so many different ups and downs and highs and lows, and we just kept holding on to that hope that whatever came next, we could walk through it.
And when we were there, you know, on one of his worst nights, that was when we sort of decided we're going to create the place that you know, there's so much narrative in the Nicku around what could happen, you know, what would happen to your children, you know, your child, your children being hooked up to all these things and all these different outcomes that can.
Feel really scary and lonely.
And what we're doing with for those is telling a new story around extreme prematurity. We are saying, hey, however this road goes, you're not alone, and when you come out of here on the other side, we're going to be here to walk you through it and to catch you, to help provide that same hope, healing impossibility through for those, you know, through our programming, we do you know, a nick You family day out every year, which is basically
like a mini fair. You know, there's a train and ponies and petting zoos and face painting and all these fun things for kids. Because what we found was Zev after all this impossible narrative, to watch him do these really incredible little kid things, you know, it just brought so much healing to us as his parents.
We had made it through such a hard season.
We're here to celebrate that with other families, to provide memories and these wonderful places for them, where the whole family, siblings included, to live out the big story after the niqu And then for parents. You know what we found when we came out is where do we put all these feelings that we had, these highs, these lows.
It's emotional whiplash in there.
You know, how do we sort of give these parents a place to heal too, to say we've been through this big journey, we have fought for our children against impossible odds. Where can I go to start believing in a big, beautiful future for myself as well?
I am.
On my daughter's first birthday, we took her and we took lunch to the to the nurses of the NICU, like we just went back to the hospital. And by this point, I mean, well, we left the hospital with her. We were told and you know what, I understand the medical system, I get it, but they just give you the worst case scenario. They literally tell you the worst things that can happen, so your expectations are managed.
So we leave the hospital being told.
We don't know she's gonna walk or do any of these things. And I cannot even tell you how normal my daughter is, right now. So obviously he's fifteen now, so obviously none of that panned out. But we went back and took lunch to the nick You nurses and two of them started crying. They said, we never get to see the babies who do better. So it was like a really for us. It was just a way to say thank you to the people who are so
important our family. But this, what you're doing sounds like it's so needed to just be able to get your questions answered by people who have been through it before. I mean, what a great thing you guys are doing. Let's talk about the movie though. Now you're a movie star too, Stephanie, you're just doing it all.
Tell me about one forty seven.
So one forty seven, so the backstory of one forty seven, that's a documentary that we have about now by.
Our friends at Farsighted Creative.
So one forty seven came about when we started for those, I thought, okay, what can we do to bring attention to this really the long and hard journey, but the beautiful journey as well that it is encapsulated in the nick You And so I thought, okay, so we're launching for those, how do we bring awareness to this. How do we raise money for this? And I thought, okay, I can I can run. That's one thing I can do. So I thought, all right, why can we do to
make a big splash. I'm going to run one hundred and forty seven miles one for every day ZEB was in that NICKU to bring hope, feeling and possibility to other families who are sitting there saying, I'm sitting in the valley. I need to know there's a mountaintop somewhere, you know, and we've you know, I'm willing to go through that valley to get to that mountain top and then I want to come back and bring that to the other people who are going through the hard things.
And so with one forty seven so a year ago September, I took off. I I had to run one hundred and forty seven miles over forty eight hours.
Center friends.
We've filmed it, community outside the video and stuff like that, and we created a documentary that tells the story of both that long, hard run and also the narrative of the nick you you know, sort of wound up into it as well. And so what we're doing with the documentary, it's been around to multiple film festivals here in Colorado.
We just had a fundraising screening of it and Boulder.
We brought it home to our community and we're getting ready to start licensing it out as well. So it's been so fun to see the movement grow, to see people hear our story in a new way.
Through one forty seven, it's been awesome.
So how can people get involved?
I mean, how do people find out about you if they are going through this? How do you bring people into the fold?
Well, we're so lucky we have such a big community.
We still have connections as well with our nurses and doctors from that time in the hospital. Zev's five Now he lives a healthy and thriving life as a five year old, and we do go back and see our nick You family as well all the time. Gosh, what a gift our nick You nurses and all the care team there were to us, and so they spread the word for us. You can go to our website www dot for those that's number four t h o SE dot org.
You can sign up for our newsletter.
You can see when you know we'll send up information when we're doing more screenings.
Our biggest ask is that if.
You know someone in the Niku right now, would you tell them about for them? You know, the whole healing and possibility that comes from these impossible journeys in the Niku, these long stays. We're here on the other side to say, whatever comes next, we're here to get you through it.
We're here to support you as you go.
You know, you could just follow us on Instagram too for those org or on Facebook.
Well, I love, love love this organization so much. Somebody and it's Zev right, Zev.
At Ev And yeah, you can hear our whole story at the Zev Project. It's a podcast I did after we got out of the nick you to just tell a new story. You know, there's all this fear and a you know, uncertainty about the future. We're here to just say whatever future comes, it can be beautiful even in the hard stuff.
Well, we always had the attitude when we got all the negative possible prognosis, we were like, look, we're just gonna do everything we can. Treat her like a normal kid and just let the ships fall where they may. Because you can get too caught up and worrying about what's going to happen or what's not going to happen, and then that just makes the whole thing worse. I have put links to everything. I've put links to four
those on the blog. I put the trailer for the movie on the blog so people can see it there.
Are you.
Do you have any showings around like in the Denver Metro coming up anytime soon?
Currently not right now. We are still we're getting ready to license it out. We're just waiting for it to finish its festival run and then we'll be able to bring it back to the Denver area. So stay tuned on our website. Like I said, you can find all the information there and we'll keep everyone posted on when you can come and see it.
It's going to be so fun.
Well let me know and I will spread the word for my listeners. And Stephanie Hawser, thank you so much for coming on the show and for everything you're doing, Because I know twelve days was the longest twelve days of my life.
You were in almost six months.
I cannot even imagine, but I can imagine what it must have been like the day you walked out of that hospital, was zev That feeling is like no other feeling in the entire world. And that's what I focus on when I think about the.
Nick you that day we left.
That's right, that's right, and I think what you said was just right. We're all part of this club. We all know that feeling.
It is such an incredible moment.
You know, you've you've gotten through one of the hardest situations in your life and now we get to provide through for those the place where you get to.
Live out that beautiful future out here in the world.
It's so good, Stephanie, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you. It was so good to be here, all right.
That is Stephanie Hauser with For those, I put a link to the Instagram page, the Facebook page, thefour those dot org page. It's just for the number four those dot org.