Brooke and Clara Peterson

Together, Brooke and Clara weighed barely seven pounds. To their parents, it was the weight of the world.

Brian and Holly Peterson spent 26 days a few inches from their newborn girls — watching them grow and develop in our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), waiting to carry them home.

The girls were eight weeks early, and their lives were off to a rocky start. Brian himself hardly made it through the delivery; the stress of his wife’s emergency Caesarean section got the better of him, and he needed medical care as we were attending her.

“I knew my family was growing,” said Holly, “and with the way the staff handled our complications, questions and concerns, I knew I had a family in them, too.”