From NICU Nights to Wedding Lights: How We Survived (and Thrived)

When people talk about how they met “the one,” it usually comes with sweet, rom-com-worthy tales—like eyes meeting across a crowded room, or love blossoming after years of friendship. Mine? Not so much.

I was a single mom to two little girls. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and honestly, a little broken.

I wasn’t looking for love—I barely had time to find matching socks. But one night, curiosity (and maybe loneliness) led me to try online dating. That’s where I met him. He said he was in the military and was about to be deployed overseas. I remember thinking, Right… this has “catfish” written all over it. But I was bored, so I kept talking.

In his mind? I was supposed to be a fling. A quick goodbye and maybe a few “fun” memories before he left the country. What he didn’t realize was that I had two tiny humans at home who ate up 98% of my energy and time. There would be no spontaneous weekend getaway or late-night meetups. I was a mother first. Period.

What neither of us expected was that we’d keep talking.

One day turned into a week. A week turned into nightly FaceTime calls, daily texts, and inside jokes that made me forget the stress of single motherhood for a moment. Then COVID hit. He got stuck overseas—everything shut down. Time zones, quarantine, and the chaos of parenting during a pandemic should’ve killed the connection, but somehow… it didn’t.

We got to know each other on a level most people don’t. No distractions. No physical expectations. Just conversation. Vulnerability. Laughter. And a whole year passed.

When he finally got back to Texas, he had a short leave—just a few days. But because of travel restrictions, he couldn’t leave the state. If I wanted to meet him in person, I’d have to board a plane and fly across the country to meet a man I’d never touched. Never hugged. Never stood face to face with.

That’s completely insane… right?

Yeah. It is. But I did it anyway.

Four days. We spent just four days together—and they changed everything.

We talked for hours, sat in comfortable silence, laughed until it hurt, and had those moments of “This is real, right?” when you finally meet someone who already knows your heart.

But reality was waiting back home: two daughters. Two little girls who had lived through their own kind of loss. I knew if they didn’t accept him, this relationship—no matter how strong—wouldn’t work.

So he leaned in. Slowly. Gently. Intentionally.

He never forced a connection. Instead, he showed up—day after day. FaceTiming with them. Listening to their stories. Watching them dance around the living room in princess dresses. They didn’t know him as “Mom’s boyfriend.” He was just “that friend who always wants to see my art.”

Meanwhile, I was battling a tidal wave of doubt.

Was I being selfish? Was this too fast? Was I just tired of doing it all alone?

When he finally came to visit us in person, my fears met reality—and it was beautiful. The girls clicked with him. They climbed on him like a jungle gym, told him all their secrets, and fought over who got to sit next to him at dinner.

That’s when I knew. This wasn’t just someone I was falling for. This was someone we were building a life with.

He was faced with a choice: stay in the military and keep the structure and security he was used to… or walk away, into the chaos of single mom life with court battles, daycare, and sticky fingers.

He looked at me and said, “I choose you. I choose the girls. The rest, we’ll figure out.”

So we figured it out.

He moved in. Three months later, I was pregnant.

Our honeymoon phase turned into survival mode real quick.

I was so sick during that pregnancy. Nothing about it was easy. And then, at just 33 weeks, our son was born. Tiny. Fragile. Rushed straight into the NICU.

We pressed pause on wedding plans and spent the next few months balancing the impossible: raising two little girls at home while keeping vigil by our newborn’s hospital bed.

No one warns you what the NICU does to your relationship. How helpless it makes you feel. How it tears at your already-tired soul.

I shut down. I cried in bathroom stalls and barely slept. I felt broken. Defeated. Numb.

But he showed up. Every single day. He played with the girls, packed school lunches, read up on preemies, and stood next to the incubator asking questions I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

Then, just when we thought we were in the clear, our son came home for a week—only to be rushed back to the hospital. This time, to a children’s facility. A new NICU. A new nightmare.

Doctors told us to prepare for the worst.

We were told our baby might not make it. And suddenly, nothing else mattered.

We prayed. We begged. We screamed into pillows and held onto each other for dear life.

And then—something changed.

We walked into his room one morning and immediately felt it. The weight in the air had shifted. And there he was… our son… breathing on his own.

We took him home again, this time with cautious joy.

But we barely had time to breathe before the next wave hit: I got a phone call that my daughters’ biological father had died unexpectedly.

Another crushing blow. And once again, the man who stepped in as a “bonus dad” was now the only dad they had.

And he didn’t run. He stepped up. He held their tears, their confusion, their anger. He walked them through their grief with a grace I didn’t even know he had.

Eventually, we did get married—and let me tell you, that story deserves its own blog post. Think Vegas energy meets toddlers in flower crowns. Total chaos. Total joy.

And then… we got pregnant again.

This time, with a little girl. And once again—preemie. Another NICU stay. Another storm. Another test of love, strength, and resilience.

All of this—in two years.

If you take anything from this story, let it be this:

Love doesn’t always look like fairytales. Sometimes it looks like diaper blowouts and NICU wristbands. Sometimes it’s takeout dinners and whispered prayers at 3 a.m. It’s late-night arguments followed by quiet apologies. It’s choosing each other—again and again—even when everything is falling apart.

To the single mom who’s tired, the dad holding it together, the couple in the thick of grief or premature diapers or just the wild ride of parenthood:

You are not alone.

Love is messy. Life is unfair. But there’s hope. There’s healing. And sometimes—miraculously—there’s a man who enters your life as a maybe… and becomes the one who never leaves.