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GREENSBORO — About a year ago, Margaret Lowe found one of the happiest days in her life had become one of the scariest.

She had given birth to her first son, Thomas — 10 weeks premature and weighing slightly more than 2 pounds.

With respiratory problems, Thomas was fighting for his life at The Women’s Hospital and ended up spending the next nine weeks inside the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

On Saturday, a 19-pound Thomas spent the day crawling and playing with other babies and children at the hospital for the 25th annual reunion of the NICU for Moses Cone Health System.

It was a day for families who endured the difficult journey of having a premature baby to reunite with one another and thank the many doctors, nurses and support staff who assisted them along the way.

“Unless you are there and you are going through it, it’s truly hard to wrap your hands around it,” Lowe said.

“It’s a bond that is so special that you’ll always have with all these families.”

That connection is founded upon the shared experiences that each NICU family faces, from moving past the concept their child’s birth didn’t go as planned and learning to care for a preemie to the shared hope the child will go home healthy.

Helping families through the process are people such as Nancy Micca, who works for the nonprofit Family Support Network of Central Carolina, which assists about 175 extended-stay families annually at The Women’s Hospital.

The group offers parents emotional support, education on caring for their baby, matching them with other parents who had experienced similar situations and home visitations, among other services.

“We’ve moved from a model from where staff was there to give the best care possible for the infant to one where now we are looking to provide for the needs of the whole family,” Micca said.

“We are providing them the emotional support to where they really feel they are the parent that they are and learn different ways of parenting while their child is in NICU.”

As stroller after stroller rolled into the parking lot of the hospital for the reunion — with plenty of games, rides, food and music — the appreciation from the hundreds of parents like Lowe and her husband Bradley was evident.

“It’s so scary. These are medically fragile angels and there are no promises; you don’t know the end result,” she said.

“I credit the Family Support Network and the wonderful staff and doctors here at the NICU. What they did for us is amazing. ... We never would have been where we are today if we had not had them.”

Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com