MINNEAPOLIS — After spending his entire life in the NICU, Cooper may look like a little boy, but his 15-pound weight is enormous.
“At 23 weeks he was one pound ten, so we went through all the ventilators,” said his mother, Anna Lisa Mahley.
That was eight months ago. A month into his NICU stay at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital, he had a neighbor, Raghu, who weighed even less. The parents were in touch quickly.
“Not that we had it all figured out, but we were kind of over the shock of what it means to do this. We had figured out the terminology. What does it mean to go from jet fan to oscillator,” Mahley said. “I think if you just walk through with another family who knows what all those hard things mean along the way, you don’t run into as many places.”
So Cooper’s family showed Raghu the ropes, and Raghu’s showed Cooper’s support by writing notes that read: “Hello friend, I’m your neighbor and friend, Raghu, I just wanted to say hi. My mother and father told me that we will be fine and one day we will dance.”
“I think it was so special. We become friends. We stay in touch,” Mahley said.
The boys also seemed to bond.
“They both started squealing, so we always said from the start that they are mates, they should do the same.”
It’s a bond their nurse, Bethie Wolf, also had to deal with.
“I call them NICU besties. That’s what I tell people, Raghu and Cooper, they’re NICU besties,” she said.
She even made the couple matching Halloween costumes.
“And I thought, Oh, they obviously have to be dinosaur friends for Halloween,” Wolf said.
Now these alternators have the best thing possible in common.
“Here we go home just a week apart, which is crazy and just so fun,” Mahley said.
Raghu came home to Cottage Grove last week and Cooper is next.
