Praying for my preemie

On her blog, she documented her experience being a premature mother, sharing poems and pictures. She also wrote articles giving other premature mothers tips and motivation. Her blog soon reached 16,000 followers, and she started getting a big response to her poems.

She gained a lot of buzz on her poem, ‘On the Day you were Born.’ Berryman found a lot of people sharing the poem, and getting messages from people worldwide. Women commented on the post, thankful for her words and shared their own stories.

Blog viewer, Linda Merritt commented, “Thank you so much for your post! It brought me to tears and reminded me of my son’s first days in the NICU. As a neonatal nurse, I was often giving the parents the hope stories and the roller coaster ride speech. You though gave all of us how a mother feels and how we NICU moms blame ourselves, thinking what we could have done wrong to have a preemie. Thank you for your post!

On another one of Kaleena’s posts, ‘I Did Everything Right,’ blog reader Jenice Grzeszczak commented, “While I was in the NICU with our daughter, I ran into so many moms who have this unearned sense of guilt about their child being in the NICU. Thank you for writing this and putting into words what many moms need to hear: #idideverythingright.”

After seeing the impact she was making, Berryman decided to write her own book, entitled ‘Stronger Than We Thought.’