Love, Nicole
“Dear NICU Mama, My hope for you in 2021 is that you realize how strong you truly are. No one can prepare you for the journey before you. None of this was part of the plan. The hits just keep on coming, mama, but you roll with the punches. You have devoted your mind, body and your whole heart to this little baby, and that takes a strength that only a mama knows. I promise you will come out on the other side of this.
One day you will see the successes instead of your perceived failures. Your body did not fail you if you didn’t carry your baby to term or you were forced to undergo an emergency C-section. You overcame some of your biggest fears and endured unbelievable pain to bring your baby into this world, and that takes strength.
You did not fail your baby. Their stay in the NICU is not because of anything you did or didn’t do. You are not only healing from giving birth but also showing up everyday to fight for your baby. Day in and day out, you are by your baby’s side, loving, advocating, watching vitals, listening for alarms and decoding doctors’ diagnoses.
You love your baby, even if you can’t hold or kiss them right away. It takes unbelievable strength and sacrifice to wait until your little one is strong enough to be removed from their incubator and unhooked from all those wires. It’s not easy to wait to hold them in your arms and finally breathe them in.
It’s okay if you are scared to take them home, even though all you want to do is take them home. Leaving the NICU means leaving all that extra support and medical knowhow. How could you ever make sure they get everything they need at home after all this? Easy. You are their mama, and you know them best. You wake up every morning, and you choose to fight for your baby, yourself and your family. There is nothing easy about that. You are stronger than you will ever know. Keep fighting.
Love,
Nicole
More of Nicole + Austin’s NICU journey:
“Austin made his entrance into this world on April 26th, 2017 weighing 10 lbs 7 oz. He was my first. He was born via emergency C-section after 18 hours of labour. I screamed my way through that surgery. My epidural only took on half my body, and there wasn’t enough time for the other drugs to take effect. He came out crying but quickly went blue and lifeless. He had aspirated on his meconium. He was intubated and rushed to the NICU. A short time later, it was determined he needed to be transferred to SickKids Hospital in Toronto. I finally held his hand through the hole in the incubator 5 hours after he was born. Then he was taken from me. We spent three days apart before I could be discharged and travel to be with him. I got updates on his condition through phone calls. My husband sent me video after video showing his progress. When I finally got to hold him, he was three days old. He was hooked up to all kinds of wires, on several pain medications, using a soother and drinking formula. The first time I nursed him was in the NICU at a children’s hospital surrounded by other little ones and their parents. We each had a small area in a big room and had to wear headphones to give the other families privacy when the doctors made their rounds. Austin went from a ventilator to a c-pap machine to breathing on his own within a week. We brought his weight up, he finished a round of medication for an infection, and we were sent home. The scars stayed with me for a long time, well past all the NICU follow up appointments. Two years after he was born, when my father died and I found out I was pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with postpartum PTSD. I finally received the help I needed. I decided to switch OBs for my second pregnancy. I found a doctor who truly listened to my concerns and went above and beyond. We scheduled a planned C-section for my second son Bexley. I had him the day after a global pandemic was declared. I was the first one to hold him in the OR because I insisted. My husband and I took him home the day the world shut down, and I feel lucky to be able to hide out from the world with him and his older brother. Neither birth and postpartum were what I expected, but I feel so lucky to have two healthy boys.”
