To the Superheroes at Sisters Buffalo

Our baby boy was on the other side of the glass in the NICU. There must have been a dozen nurses all around him. My wife, Kylie, was down the hall, sobbing. She’d given birth to Teller a few days earlier, and she was struggling after the C-section. She was in a wheelchair, and the nurses had moved her out of the room after they hit the emergency button. Teller’s lung had collapsed. I stood there, and I listened to Kylie sobbing, and I watched a bag go over our son’s mouth. The nurses squeezed air into him and tried to get his chest moving. 

I watched it go up and down, up and down, up and down. 

I prayed it would never stop. 

Teller was born at Sisters Hospital in Buffalo on April 28, 2025, three weeks early. He was a big boy, almost fully grown. Seven pounds of tank. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine, but when he came out, he wouldn’t take his first full breath. The doctors took him from us right away, and it’s just … it was our worst nightmare. We had this beautiful baby boy and we wanted to hug him and hold him and protect him, and we couldn’t.

We were told his lungs were underdeveloped, and one was punctured.

I remember just standing there, and my head was spinning like, Okay.… Well.… What do we do? How do we make him better??

All we could do was wait. It was torture. 

And the feeling that really stuck with me was like … just failure. I felt like I had failed at my job of keeping my son safe, of making sure he was okay. I felt like I had done something wrong, like it was us who were doing this to him. It’s the sort of pain that you don’t even know exists until it grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let you go. 

Those first couple days … they were the longest of our lives. 

His punctured lung resolved within the first couple of days, but they couldn’t get him off the ventilator. The scariest part was that they couldn’t even figure out why. They were giving him all these meds to try and get his lungs to inflate and nothing was working. Kylie’s mom had come to town to help out and watch our oldest son, Tripp. He was only a year and a half at the time. I missed him so much. I wanted to hug him, to show him his brother. I just wanted us to be a family. I felt lost. Everything at the hospital was new and terrifying. 

I remember there was this screen by Teller’s NICU bed. The nurses told me about this number on it, how it needed to be between 90 and 100. I don’t remember exactly what it was measuring, but anybody who’s been in a situation like that will understand the feeling of like, It’s my job to keep an eye on that number and manifest it to stay in that range. And, man, the craziest thing kept happening. It kept flashing 89. Like, so close. And … my jersey number. I joked to Kylie, I gotta change my jersey after this. I can’t see that number again. But it was so frustrating, because he was so close. 

Kylie and I would sit there and watch him, and for a while things were fine. The numbers looked good, sometimes 89, sometimes in the range. Teller was breathing. We still hadn’t been able to hold our son. But he was okay, so we were okay. 

Then all of a sudden the numbers plummeted. The machine started ringing. His little chest stopped moving. His lung collapsed in front of us. All these nurses came flying in, right past me. They moved us out of the room and put the bag over his mouth.

The sound of Kylie crying down the hall from me…. That’s with me forever.

I stood behind the glass with tears in my eyes, and I prayed they’d keep our son alive. 

To those nurses, all I can say is that we owe you the world. 

I don't know how long that moment lasted.... It could have been 10 seconds. It felt like 10 years. 

I watched his chest start moving again.

Up and down, up and down, up and down. 

He started breathing. 

He came back to us. 

There’s moments in there that I’ll never forget, because my body won’t let me. Kylie and I had our third child this August in Virginia. She’s the sweetest little baby girl named Cohen. Mom is doing well, and the boys already love their little sister. During Kylie’s pregnancy, though, that fear from what we went through with Teller always existed. We’d try not to think about it, we’d try to keep everything positive and remind each other that we can do this. But it’s there, it’s real. It never goes away. 

Teller is 18 months old now, and he’s a superhero. He’s bigger than his older brother Tripp. He’s a bruiser. He’s my little twin. I love him with all my heart. We are so lucky to have him in our lives.

But it takes more than luck.

We are forever indebted to the incredible team at Sisters in Buffalo. The nurses, doctors, and all the staff there are some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life. I feel like, as a country, we don’t do enough for our frontline workers all the time. Especially nurses.

I remember, just minutes after he was born, when we started to realize he wasn’t okay, the nurses handled everything with such care. I think I speak for so many parents when I say what happened that day was our deepest fear. And in that moment, the nurses, they knew they had to care for Teller … but they also had to care for us. 

Their bedside manner, the way they spoke to us, it helped us so much. In that moment, those nurses were the most important people in the world to us. They were the guardians of our baby boy. And they handled that responsibility with kindness and with a love that will stick with Kylie and me for the rest of our lives.

November is Prematurity Awareness Month, and November 15 is World Prematurity Day. Teller falls right on the cusp of being a preemie, but our experience with him is what so many parents have to go through with children born early. About one in 10 babies will be born preterm, and I think the impact it has on families is often misunderstood. There aren’t many days that go by where I don’t look at Teller and remember him in the NICU, or remember the fear we had. But I see him now, and I see the light he’s brought into our lives, and I’m just thankful.

To the nurses, Megan, Kelly, Lauren, Claire, Michelle, and so many others: I don’t think I have the words to say how much you’ve done for our family. When we tell our son that he's a superhero, we make sure to remind him that it's because he was saved by a dozen superheroes.

Kylie and I made a donation to Sisters this spring, and we brought Teller in to meet all the people who took care of him. He also got to see the transport bed they named after him, “Tuch’s Truck.” I remember feeling emotional that day, thinking about how I’d handle being back there. Parking, walking in, just being there, I was okay. But then I saw the familiar faces of the nurses who cared for us, and I broke down. I hadn’t realized how much they’d impacted me until that moment, or how deeply I was indebted to them. 

And to the doctors, Dr. Davidson, Dr. Dukarm, Dr. Singhal: Your around-the-clock effort, your kindness, your clarity — you saved our whole family.

We're all doing great now in Washington. Happy, healthy and doing our thing. (And Teller is more of a truck than ever.)

But to the people of Buffalo: For us, the city will always be a home. Our boys were born there, and I loved every second of playing for you all. Thank you for your support, on and off the ice.

Sincerely, 

Alex, Kylie, Teller, Tripp and Cohen