Love, Jen
Dear NICU Mama,
Nothing prepares you to mother through a global pandemic, but you can find hope in strength and resilience.
Giving birth during a pandemic is hard. Having a baby in the NICU is hard. Giving birth to a baby who needs to stay in the NICU during a pandemic is next level hard. You will experience an unimaginable amount of anxiety, stress, and loneliness. But you’ll also experience strength;
strength from within you that you didn’t know before and didn’t think was possible. Strength when you show up each day to sit next to that isolette. Strength when you reach in and your baby finally grasps your finger. Strength when you ask the questions - even if you don’t want to know the answers.
Is it possible to stay positive in moments like this? I don’t know. But I do know that if there was ever a time that your baby needs you, it’s now. Babies don’t know we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Your baby will do what he or she needs to do regardless of what’s going on outside of those hospital walls. That’s the resilience you’ll see. That is what will give you hope.
Keep going. Stay strong. You’ve got this mama!
Love,
Jen
More of Jen + her Cole’s NICU journey:
“My son Cole was born at 38 weeks with tetralogy of fallot and anal antresia. While he wasn’t a preemie, he was extremely medically fragile. Because he was conpletely dependent on prostaglandin, he was whisked away from us Immediately at birth. It wasn’t until hours later that I was able to meet him when they rolled my bed up to NICU while 2 cardiologists and 2 nurses surrounded him monitoring him while he had his first of many echocardiograms. What was supposed to be a brief NICU stay (5 days max) while he recovered from his GI surgery and waited for his heart surgery, quickly doubled in time. His heart surgery was postponed due to another patient in critical care. The days that followed were excruciating when his lung collapsed and he was intubated. After 10 days the cardiac surgeon took him in for emergency heart surgery. He then spent another 20 days in the cardiac PICU. The NICU team at Yale Hospital was absolutely incredible . The attention he got from each nurse was amazing. They took care of him (and me) like he was their own baby!”
