For occupational therapists working in neonatal intensive care units, the tenuousness of life is part of ordinary daily experience. However, for parents, having a premature infant must feel like a break from their expectations of having a healthy infant and an ordinary family life. Occupational therapists provide opportunities for co-occupation that promote the development of the family and support parents by providing the knowledge that family life is still possible even if the infant has severe disabilities. This article will illustrate how one occupational therapist facilitated extraordinarily ordinary moments of becoming a family for a mother and premature infant through negotiating the meaning of parenting and parenting co-occupations and providing opportunities for parenting co-occupations, which are both important aspects of occupation-based practice implemented in the neonatal intensive care unit.
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