News Anchor Shares Scary, Emotional Journey With Premature Twins

FARMINGTON, CT — The day Heidi Voight's twin baby girls outgrew their clothes, she began to smile and tear up. While the thought of needing to get bigger children's clothes might typically stress a mother out, Voight knew this was a sign her girls were growing and no longer needed to wear their preemie outfits.

"Even carrying twins, knowing they’d probably arrive a tad smaller and maybe a couple weeks earlier, I still never thought I’d need outfits so tiny a doll could wear them," Voight said in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday. "Maybe in a way, in hindsight, I didn’t want to jinx things by buying any just in case."

Voight, a popular morning anchor for NBC Connecticut, said her daughters were born Sunday, May 13, a full six weeks earlier than expected. Polly weighed 3 pounds, 11 ounces and was 16.5 inches long, while Violet weighed 3 pounds, 10.4 ounces and was 17 inches long.

They were "covered in wires, tubes, stickers and bulky breathing equipment," and could only fit into preemie diapers and hospital hats as they sat in heated isolettes in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the UConn Health Center in Farmington. It would be 28 long hours before Voight could even hold her babies for the first time, and they would end up spending nearly 45 days in the NICU.

"Most new moms excitedly plan 'going home' outfits for when they get discharged with a healthy term baby, usually two or three days later," Voight said. "Three days after my delivery...those outfits were sitting untouched in my packed hospital bag, far too big for my itty-bitty girls, and there were no discharge plans."

Unable to bring her girls home, Voight would instead make frequent trips down the hall from her hospital room to the NICU and visit with her newborn children. It was during one of these trips she found herself bursting into tears at the sight of her girls dressed in tiny colorful preemie onesies that had been donated to the unit.

"I cried not just in gratitude," Voight said, "but because for the first time in our scary, emotional journey, my little girls suddenly looked like...my little girls."

Rather than focusing on the girls' tubes and wires, Voight instead found herself admiring the pretty floral print on Polly's onesie and the giraffes and elephants on Violet's clothes.

Though she admits it might sound silly at first that her daughters' clothing would affect her so deeply, Voight said that was the moment she stopped feeling so filled with anxiety and was finally able to let herself feel joy.

This week, Voight donated nearly all of her girls' preemie clothing to the NICU in hopes the doll-sized clothes will inspire others the way they inspired her.

"We donated those tiny little girl clothes for other preemie babies to come, and for another scared NICU mom to feel that glimmer of hope," Voight said. "Your baby girl is here, and she’s beautiful. You can celebrate that. And I know it seems impossible at the beginning, but you are going to get through this...together."

A number of hospitals in Connecticut accept donations to the NICU.

According to a nurse at Norwalk Hospital, their unit accepts donations of blankets and clothing. Items like preemie car seats and and swings have also been donated in the past.

A volunteer group also knits hats for the department, and preemie parents will often donate the clothing their child has grown out of.

"If you’d like to donate clothes or blankets, contact your local NICU to see what their current needs are," Voight said. "I can assure you it means so much to the families of the tiniest patients."

Read more about Voight and her girls on her Facebook page.

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Photo credit: Heidi Voight