In honour of World Prematurity Day on November 17, former Miss South Africa Melinda Bam took to her timeline to honnour her daughter Rein.
In her lengthy Instagram post, Melinda reflected on how her early arrival at 30 weeks and five days, weighing 1.1kg, led to a challenging yet triumphant 66-day journey in the neonatal intensive care unit (Nicu).
“Nothing prepares a mother and father for the push-and-pull between standing strong in faith and feeling your hope hang by a thread through every setback, every alarm, every hour that crawls by. But even there, in that fire, God was already ahead of us,” she wrote.
“He prepared our hearts for the flames, not to burn us, but to prove us, sustain us and transform our faith from fragile to forged. I learned the quiet, fierce resilience of a mother I didn’t know I had. I leaned on the unwavering strength of my husband, and we clung to a circle of prayer warriors we could never have survived without. And then, there were the Nicu heroes, the nurses who stood at our baby’s bedside night after night, and the pediatricians whose hands, I am convinced, are guided by the Holy Spirit Himself.”
Melinda encouraged other mothers walking the same path.
“Preemies may look fragile, but they are born with immeasurable strength and a heartbeat full of purpose. Rein is our little miracle, and so is every tiny warrior in every Nicu tonight. To the mom sitting beside an incubator right now, you are not alone. Hope is real. Miracles still happen. Your baby’s story is being written with tenderness and power, even amid the deafening alarms and monitors.”
Watch the video below:
More than two years ago Melinda welcomed her first child and has penned heartfelt messages to her baby boy.
She has also expressed her gratitude to her husband Adriaan Bergh for being a great support structure.
“Every minute of that has been in your presence and in wonder and awe of what you are doing, creating, preparing. As much as you’ve created and formed this boy in my womb, you have shone on areas that have never seen light in us before, awakening parenthood in a glorious sunrise. What a gift, what a wait, what an awakening, what a father,” she wrote.
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