I remember sitting in the NICU with our sweet son, Oliver, and feeling so alone and empty. Surely, I wasn’t the first person to go through an experience like this. People have babies in the NICU all the time, right?
With my experience as a labor & delivery nurse, I felt confident at first that I would be able to navigate this NICU journey with ease. I can say with absolute certainty I have never been more wrong about anything in my life.
In my professional experience, I saw preterm babies born what seemed like every day. The NICU team would come and whisk them to a land far, far away and I would recover mom from the delivery. After about two hours I would transfer her to the postpartum floor, never to be seen or heard from again.
When I had my son Oliver at 32 weeks, I thought “Hmmm.. this kind of sucks, but it can’t be that bad. I’m sure he’ll be fine in like 2 weeks and then I’ll have him home with me.”
Now let me paint the picture for you. I am a labor and delivery nurse with over 7 years of experience, I have my Master’s degree in nursing and am a Certified Lactation Counselor. I know that babies don’t learn to suck, swallow and breathe until 32-34 weeks. I know that preemies having a learning curve. I know that they need additional resources that full-term infants may not. Despite all of my education and professional experience, it all went directly out the proverbial window.
For 29 days, I watched our son be poked and prodded, attached to a cardiac monitor, go through multiple NG and OG tubes and experience multiple setbacks. I was suddenly an experienced nurse that knew absolutely nothing.
All I knew for certain is that the love I had for that sweet baby overpowered everything.
I was learning to breastfeed and pump at Oliver’s bedside when one of the nurses came over to help me. She asked if I could feel the “let-down.” When I tell you I looked at her like she had 5 heads I’m not joking in the slightest. What the hell is a let-down??
I am a CERTIFIED LACTATION COUNSELOR!!!! I know what a let-down is!! I educate my patients on this every day!
It’s almost like all of my brain power and anything I have ever learned was just pushed to a separate part of my brain, never to be seen again.
I write these blog posts to let you know that you are, in fact, not alone. I have an abundance of knowledge when it comes to labor, delivery and lactation. None of it matters. Nothing could have prepared me for my NICU journey.
We are all in this together. The all unknowing, scary, tumultuous journey that is the NICU.
Comments