Your NICU Story Matters.

Listen as Vanessa shares hers.

Vanessa is a dear friend and former client of mine. Her baby arrived at 29 weeks gestation and had a NICU stay that spanned 66 days.

Themes from our Conversation

  • loneliness,

  • caring for your baby in a practical way and making time for the emotional part to grow,

  • naming your baby before you feel connected to your baby,

  • advice for NICU families,

  • how the trauma affects her 18 months/3 years later,

  • how to integrate their birth experience with who they become,

  • etc.

Quotes from Vanessa:

  • “I didn’t get to see her until over 24 hours the next day which - sucked.”

  • “This is not at all how any of it was supposed to go.”

  • “I can’t be involved in her care the way I thought I would.”

  • “Being a Black woman and knowing our survival rates are real low made it feel like I couldn't let go of advocating for myself.”

  • “I don’t know if you’re gonna make it, so I'm a little afraid to allow myself to be vulnerable to love you in the way I envisioned I would feel when I had my baby.”

  • “Even when the doctors would tell me ‘she’s okay, I’m not concerned,’ I’m always concerned. And that has lingered and will probably linger for the rest of my life.”

  • “You all spend more time with her than I do, I don’t know her…you know my baby better than I do.”

  • “Nothing could’ve prepared me for the experience.”

  • “No question is stupid. Ask as many as you want. Repeat back what you think you have heard anyone say to you, and ask if that is correct.”

  • “If you’ve not had an experience in the NICU or you’ve not known people who has experience in the NICU, then you are just as lost as the family in the NICU. So it's natural that you will have a lot of questions.”

  • "It's a complicated feeling: yes I’m grateful she’s okay but I’m not glad she’s here…she was supposed to be in there for another 2 ½ more months.”

  • “It felt like I was in a glass window, where I could see everyone going about their business, and they could kind of see me, but they couldn’t see the turmoil and the pain and the fear. And I was expected to act like everything was fine.”

  • "Discharge felt like being ejected out of a car.”

  • “The whole experience is 'do not get your hopes up.'”

  • “The gratitude <then> felt forced…now the gratitude feels overwhelming.”

  • “There’s this layer of strength that I now can sit around like ‘I can do anything.’”

  • “There’s Vanessa before the day we went for that ultrasound, and there’s Vanessa after. She’s not the same person.”