Love, Valerie
Dear NICU mama,
You and your full-term baby are not forgotten. The road along the NICU journey can feel lonely and desolate, especially if your experience seems different from the others in the NICU with your full-term baby.
While over half of the NICU baby admissions are full-term babies, they do not appear to be seen as much as other babies. In my experience, I often felt forgotten or that my experience wasn’t as significant as other babies and their mamas. The comparison game was fierce and it hurt. I felt invisible, like I should “buck up and suck it up” because my baby was full-term, and my natural fears and anxieties of having a NICU baby were somehow irrational just because my son was full-term.
Sweet NICU mama, please hear me loud and clear: you and your full-term baby are NOT forgotten. You and your full-term baby are significant. You and your full-term baby matter. Your fears matter. Your anxieties matter. Your experience matters. Your baby is special. You are special. I challenge you to get out of the comparison trap; your experience counts no matter how many weeks your baby is or how many days your baby is in the NICU. I hear you, I see you, and I feel you.
Love,
Valerie
For more of Valerie + Daniels’s NICU journey:
Valerie’s firstborn child was born via c-section at 37 weeks as he had an abdominal wall defect called Omphalocele and she had a bicornuate uterus which made his cozy home more cramped than normal.
He was immediately transferred to the NICU following an uneventful scheduled delivery. He experienced assistance with breathing and eating by having breathing tubes, cpap, and ng tubes throughout his stay. He experienced a collapsed lung when he was just a week old, but recovered quickly after less than a week with his breathing tube put back in.
After a rollercoaster of slow weight gain, endless xrays and labs, and daily meetings with his care team, we finally got to go home after 33 days.
Today, he continues to gain weight slowly, but has made tremendous progress in meeting developmental milestones. He is the most joyful baby she has ever seen. He is always smiling and LOVES people; he makes her life so much more fulfilling and she wouldn’t change our experience for anything.
