Rockdale County mother and son bring a little Christmas cheer to the NICU

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ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. — Brittney Fersner says she left behind a lot of memories at Piedmont Rockdale Hospital, now she’s making new ones with her son.

“How can we protect my baby and keep him alive,” Brittney Fersner said.

Her son, Lawrence, came at Christmastime, two months early and weighing barely more than three pounds.

“One day I woke up and said, ‘I want to give gifts to the kids,’” Lawrence Fersner said.

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“Munchie,” as he is called, is now 8 years old, and on Friday, he helped mom and grandma prepare gift bags for the moms and dads whose newborns are in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

It was the same NICU he was in as a baby.

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“A lot of parents here are first-time parents. Having to leave your child here at any time is already hard enough. But to leave your child over the holidays can be heartbreaking,” Piedmont Rockdale’s Alexis Scott said.

While the tiny babies can’t have toys, the care packages for their parents were perfect.

Brittney Fersner wanted them to know that although their little ones may weigh only two or three pounds at the moment, so did her son.

Now, he’s growing up and playing football. While he was a small baby, Lawrence Fersner is now 150 pounds of football-playing 8-year-old.

“Everything is going to be OK. You sit there and cry your eyes out, but everything is going to be OK,” she said.

Brittney Fersner said she and her son were going to make visiting Piedmont Rockdale’s NICU a Christmastime tradition.

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