“Dear NICU Mama, this NICU Awareness Month, I hope you know that you are allowed to feel two completely different things at once.
You can be incredibly happy and grateful that your baby is growing and their vitals are good, while also grieving everything you thought those first days of motherhood would look like.
Being a NICU mom is a journey that only some will fully understand. The grief of what it feels like to listen to beeps and learn what every number means. To wash and sanitize your hands before you can hold your own baby. To ask permission to do things that other moms never have to think twice about. To leave your baby at the end of the day when every part of you is screaming that you should be taking them home. But I get it. I see you.
You are allowed to be grateful and disappointed. Happy and heartbroken. Hopeful and scared. You are allowed to cry happy tears and sad tears. You are allowed to miss the newborn experience you imagined while loving your miracle baby right in front of you with everything you have. Grief and gratitude can exist together.
Your NICU journey does not have to be beautiful every second for you to be strong. Sometimes strength is simply walking back into that NICU room and showing up again.
So, mama, give yourself permission to feel it all. There is no wrong way to experience this. You are loving your baby through something you never imagined you would have to endure, and that love is strength.”
Love,
Mercedes
More of Our Journey:
“Our son was born at 26 weeks and 7 days, nearly three months early. Five days before he was born, my water broke unexpectedly because I was retaining too much amniotic fluid. There was no gestational diabetes, no known issue with my baby, and no real explanation. It was simply a complete fluke. I was admitted to the hospital and told I could deliver within a week or potentially stay pregnant for another eight weeks. I thought I had more time. I was flooded with information those 5 days. No matter when my son came, we were going to spend time in the NICU and that left me feeling so scared and uncertain.
Five days after being admitted, I went into labor. My labor was nothing like I had imagined. Because I was high-risk, I could only labor on my back, and after hours of excruciating back labor, I finally agreed to an epidural. Before I could even get it, my son fell into the birth canal. I went from 1 cm dilated at 5:00 to holding my baby at 6:20. My entire journey into motherhood happened fast and furious, so I probably should have expected nothing less from him.
What should’ve been a blissful moment of welcoming my baby into the world was filled with uncertain and fear again. There was no golden hour, no skin-to-skin, no sleepy newborn snuggles. Instead, my tiny baby was rushed to the NICU while I recovered alone, sending his dad with him because I couldn’t stand the thought of him being alone.
We spent 74 days in the NICU. 74 days of monitors, beeps, medical terms, pumping, washing and sanitizing my hands just to hold my own baby, celebrating tiny milestones, and learning how to be his mom in a way I never imagined. I became so consumed by his care that my family joked I could have been his nurse.
We finally brought him home 11 days before his due date. We didn’t need medical support (no ng tube, oxygen, etc), so I thought this burden of chords and restrictiveness would be left in the past, but it didn’t. I wasn’t aware of how hard that transition would be.
Our journey looked nothing like the motherhood I imagined. But it taught me a strength I didn’t know I had and gave me an appreciation for the most ordinary moments with my baby.
74 days in the NICU. 11 days before his due date. And a lifetime of gratitude for the fact that he is home. Otto is thriving and is only a month off from his birth age developmentally! This is huge given the fact he was born 3 months early.”