And you can clue listeners in, but like how you came up with the main character and what that meant to you.

Yeah, definitely.

So I actually, so I started writing the book in 2021, two years after Max was born in the midst of COVID, I was like, needing a creative outlet and a online course in picture book writing and started thinking about it and just really wanted to write a book about a NICU experience.

And the original story was actually written from the baby's perspective.

There was no sibling involved given, as you said, that was my experience.

I was a first time mom.

And so I wrote it from the baby's perspective of like, wanting to go home.

But help me get inside your head a little bit during that time.

Right.

Um, and that's one thing I tell people if they ask me what not to do.

I'm like: Don't ask when they're coming home because they don't know, and they don't wanna be reminded of that.

Like, it's already stressful.

Um, yeah, so I think, like, as you said, like, the parents are so caught up in what's going on, and it's stressful, and if they have other kids at home, it's even more stressful.

They wanna obviously give attention and love to that child or children.

Um, or even if they don't have kids, but there's a niece or a nephew or a next-door neighbor kid that's like, "I expected to see this baby.

How long did it take you to be able to revisit and process what you wanted to do, or was that even part of it? Has this book always been inside you?

Mm-hmm.

I have two kids.

My son Max is almost seven, and my daughter Eva is 18 months.

And Max, when Max was born, he came six weeks ahead of schedule, at 34 weeks.

My pregnancy was fairly normal, except I had two episodes of bleeding that were kind of unexplained.

I would get checked out right away, and the heartbeat and everything was fine.

The doctor thought maybe it was something in the placenta or some sort of blood clot, but everything was fine with the baby, so moving right along.

Yeah.