Mom and Preemie Have Spent 200 Days in the NICU Since Birth at 24 Weeks: ‘We’re Going Home When She’s Ready’ 

Seven months can feel like forever when you’re counting progress in oxygen levels, tiny milestones, and the hope of leaving the hospital with your baby in your arms. For Celia Strauss, that’s meant building daily life inside the NICU, where her daughter, Honor, has spent every day since birth.

“It’s a New Year, and I figured it seems like a good time to share a little bit about who I am,” Strauss says in the viral TikTok that first introduced her story. “My name is Celia. We haven’t met before.”

In the video, Strauss shares that she’s 33, a first-time mom, and that Honor was born “extremely prematurely last year out of the blue in June,” upending everything overnight. “We’ve been living in the NICU,” she says, explaining that the family even relocated and transferred hospitals as Honor fought to grow stronger.

Now, Strauss is opening a window into what that reality looks like—beyond medical jargon and charted milestones. She says the shift from a normal pregnancy to an emergency delivery happened so quickly it still doesn’t feel fully real.

“It was an absolute whirlwind,” Strauss says. Up until the sudden change, she recalls things going smoothly. “Before that, I was like, totally healthy pregnancy,” she says, noting she was “working out every day” and that her OB appointments “had been amazing.”

Strauss says she and her husband, Cody, were on vacation when she started feeling off, unsure if she was overthinking it. Then her water broke at the beach. They rushed to the hospital still believing they’d be checked and sent home.

“And even at this time, we’re still thinking, like, everything’s fine,” she says. “I remember them coming in the room and saying, like, ‘You guys aren’t going home.’ ”

At first, Strauss and Cody misunderstood, assuming it meant a longer hospital stay than expected. But the next sentence clarified everything. “They’re like, ‘No, like you’re not going home until you have your baby,’ ” Strauss remembers. “And we were just like, ‘Whoa. Okay.’ ”

From there, Strauss was transferred to a hospital equipped with the level of NICU care Honor would need. She was put on bed rest for four days while doctors tried to delay labor.

“And then the night that we hit 24 weeks, which is like viability week… I went into labor and delivered her,” Strauss says. “It was just wild, just totally unexpected and scary.”

The shock wasn’t only that Honor arrived so early—it was also how little Strauss and Cody knew about what came next. “We didn’t have any idea, even, like, what the NICU was,” she says, adding they didn’t realize babies born that early could survive.

“It was really just like entering into a whole unknown universe,” she says. The life they expected to be living, and the one they thought was just around the corner, vanished in an instant.

Early on, Strauss held tightly to a timeline she’d heard from other families: that Honor might go home around her due date. October 18 became the date they repeated to themselves—a finish line they could picture.

“In our mind… me and my husband were like, ‘Okay, we can make it to October,’ ” Strauss says. “And then October comes around, and we’re like, ‘I don’t think we’re leaving in October.’ ” They hoped for Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. Those dates passed, too.

After the holidays, Strauss says they stopped bargaining with the calendar. “So it’s just now we’ve just totally let go of deadlines,” she says. “We’re going home when she’s ready.”

As Honor’s stay stretched on, the couple had to figure out how to keep life running outside the hospital as well. Strauss says they’re originally from Tallahassee, Florida, but transferred to Jacksonville—a two-and-a-half-hour drive away—because Honor needed more specialized care.

For the first three months, Cody was able to take family leave and stay with them full time, something Strauss says made a huge difference. “We got to go through it together,” she says, explaining that it helped steady them during the chaos.

Now, their routine is built around constant travel and tough trade-offs. Strauss says Cody stays for four days, then returns home for 48 hours, then comes back again, balancing his work as a first responder with the pull of being beside his daughter.

Strauss, meanwhile, has been there “around the clock,” putting her own work on pause. She says she’s a small business owner, but nothing felt more important than staying present through Honor’s hardest days.

One reason they remained in Jacksonville even after Honor’s heart issue improved was the way the hospital supports family involvement. Strauss says it’s one of the rare NICUs that allows parents to room in, making it possible for her to truly live alongside her baby.

“I’m in her room right now,” Strauss says. “That’s not a very common thing for NICUs to offer that type of like family integration.”

She says the difference was immediate, especially after the earlier pain of leaving her newborn behind at night in the first hospital. “It was just very painful being away from your baby,” she says, remembering how unnatural it felt to be separated in those earliest days.

Even in a place that felt right, there were still stretches that tested everything. “There were moments where we… didn’t know if she was going to make it and pull through,” Strauss says. “She was fully maxed out on oxygen support.”

In those moments, Strauss says she and Cody leaned on each other, and on the medical team they trusted. Outside the hospital, she says their community stepped in to keep things from falling apart.

“We have an amazing support system,” Strauss says, describing how friends and family helped in practical ways—and in small emotional gestures that made her feel less alone. “Just texting, constantly, making playlists,” she says.

Motherhood in the NICU, Strauss says, has rewritten everything she thought she knew about what a “good” start looks like. During pregnancy, she imagined the kind of mom she’d be and the things she thought she’d need.

“And it was like you don’t need anything,” Strauss says. “Your baby needs you, and a diaper and the air that they breathe and love.”

That clarity has stayed with her, even on days when fear sits close. Watching Honor fight, she says, made everything else feel smaller—and in an unexpected way, she’s grateful for the perspective.

And yet, she says, there’s also been sweetness in survival mode: moments of joy that don’t make sense until you’ve lived them. “It’s been hard and scary,” Strauss says, “but it’s also been like, beautiful and sweet.”

As they inch toward the end of this chapter, Strauss says her feelings are layered. She’s excited—but she’s also heard something many NICU parents don’t expect: that leaving can come with its own kind of heartbreak.

“The nurses that we have here… they’re like family to us now,” she says. Strauss knows it will feel different going from a full team caring for Honor to it being just her and Cody at home.

Still, she can picture the moment she’s been waiting for—something simple. “She’s never even seen outside,” Strauss says, imagining fresh air, sunlight, and pushing Honor in a stroller for the first time.

It feels like a beginning they’ve been waiting to reach. “It almost feels like we’re giving birth all over again,” Strauss says.

Looking back, Strauss says she wishes she could return to those earliest NICU days and tell herself two things. First: stop chasing deadlines and start trusting Honor’s pace.

“The babies here are like sea turtles,” Strauss says, sharing an analogy that stuck with her. “It’s just this slow, steady race forward… don’t rush it.”

Second: lean into connection, even when you’re scared. Strauss says the more involved you are in your baby’s care, the more confidence grows—and the more bonding starts to feel natural.

“The sooner you get your hands on… the bonding just clicks,” she says. Strauss encourages parents to advocate, ask questions, and participate as much as they can.

Through all of it, Strauss says one of the most meaningful parts of their story is the name she and Cody chose in the middle of the chaos. She says they didn’t plan it ahead of time—it came in a moment that demanded courage.

“If we get this baby here, it’s the greatest honor of our life,” Strauss says. Now, she says, her daughter has earned the name—and so has the life they’ve fought to build together. “She is so strong and incredible,” Strauss adds. “It’s been an honor to witness her strength.”