Love, Catherine

“Dear NICU Mama, When you feel alone I hope you know the nursery chair you are sitting in has held many moms before you. It steadied them through the highs and the lows. It rocked them when they held their baby for the first time, and through hundreds of pumping sessions and micro naps. It cradled them through rounds, late nights, and early mornings. I hope you know it will go on to do that for many mothers after you.

It may not be the chair you carefully picked out for the nursery at home, but it is the chair where you became a mother. It holds your tears, your smiles, your pain, and your joy. It holds the beginning of your motherhood story.

So NICU mama, let that chair hold and support you now. It is exactly where your baby wants you to be. But, please (please please please) remember that if you can’t be there, someone will hold your place by snuggling, comforting, feeding and loving your baby until you can. When you are ready, there is a beautiful community of women and families who have sat where you sit and are ready to embrace wherever your NICU journey may lead or leave you. You are not alone.”

Love,
Catherine

More of Catherine + Lily + Nora’s NICU Journey:

“I spontaneously conceived twins in 2016. I experienced severe morning sickness lost over 15% of my body weight.  At 25 weeks I waltzed in for a quick check up and found out I had gained weight for the first time in my pregnancy but my steady regular blood pressure had spiked to dangerously high, stroke levels.

I made it through the night in L and D without having to deliver. I spent 2.5 weeks on the hospital heavily medicated and waiting/hoping to keep them in utero awhile longer. At 27.4 weeks my pre eclampsia grew to HELLP syndrome. I was scheduled for a c-section when my labs showed signs of liver and kidney failure. My beautiful baby girls were born weighing 1.5 lbs and 2.5lbs. Neither one cried and they were intubated and taken to the NICU immediately after delivery. 

I was tied to a magnesium pump for the first few days and two weeks after they were born I woke up to severe swelling in my right leg. An ER trip uncovered an 18 inch long blood clot that required two surgeries and several days in the ICU to break up. 

The twins, Lily and Nora, progress was a series of one step forward two steps back. They were intubated several times, had feeding tubes, fought of NEC scares and healed PDAs. My 1.5 pound peanut held the longest stay record for our level three Nicu.

The momentum of the emergent state of their arrival lasted a long time for me. That adrenalin buzz carried me passed the NICU to being home with young twins who had medical monitors and oxygen tubes, then carried me through PT OT and speech support in our home. It took me a few years to slow down and recognize the work I needed to start to come down off of my momentum train. I am a work on progress and sharing our story has been a helpful strategy. Thank you DNM for letting me share our story.”