NICU Awareness Month
NICU Awareness week has almost come and gone..
Andddd I haven’t said anything. I don’t know what to say.
It’s truly impossible to put into words what it’s like to have your baby whisked away with no warning or understanding of what’s happening.
My friend Brook has been an absolute rockstar as she’s been raising NICU awareness and sharing common misconceptions, stories, etc. so please head to her Instagram and blog for lots of good info an inspiration!
Check our her instagram: https://instagram.com/myeverydayevan?igshid=1ax9dbaesdu5u and her blog here https://www.myeverydayevan.com/#tve-jump-17247dd18d8 )
It’s hard to explain to people that even once you’re home and SO happy to be so from the NICU, there is still so much going on in your life/heart/mind.
It’s different for every parent and every baby.
It’s even harder to explain when people don’t ask. They simply assume you’re home and everything is normal
for you. You obviously cannot explain what you’re going through to someone who doesn’t ask, and doesn’t know to ask.
During the early days in the NICU and being home, I had no idea how to ask for help. And as strange as it sounds, I didn’t feel worthy of it. There were people who checked in daily and for that, I’ll be forever grateful.
But the people who didn’t check in? Who didn’t know what to say or how to help? I hold nothing against them. How could I when I couldn’t even articulate thoughts, emotion, or muster up the courage or even know how to ask for help?
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Arriving home after all of that was a huge relief, but it did not feel *normal* how could it?
For us, being away from family, and having a million doctor appointments to drag not only my little baby after surgery to, but also my fresh emotional 3 year old to was so hard and so unnerving. I did my best.
Most parents are dealing with something hard as their baby is recovering/they settle in to their new normal.
For me? And I’ve talked about this before, but Haven’s incision had an incredibly hard time healing.
Due to Clay’s work schedule, the cleaning and treating of this fell completely on my shoulders. I can’t even express how wild all of this was, how much crippling anxiety I had wondering if I was doing the right thing, taking pictures of it EVERY DAY to send to the nurse practitioner, cardiologist, and pediatrician (and how wonderful they all were, but they often gave me 3 different guidelines for how to move forward) it ground me down over and over day after day after day.
It’s hard to look back on early days home where all my iPhone photo roll has to offer me are photos of Haven’s ever changing incision. Not of her beautiful face, or Ellis’ dynamic antics.
It’s hard to remember.
We were told to not have visitors until her incision was healed. But not given a play by play on whether it is okay if it’s mostly healed...since her’s took a unique spin.
To this day, most of mine and Clay’s family, most of my friends, haven’t met Haven— and that’s perhaps the hardest part.
Obviously that has mostly to do with a pandemic. Her last appointments for her incision was literally 4 days before our nation SHUT DOWN.
It’s hard to know what to say during something like
NICU awareness month, and I think I’ll have better and more refined thoughts one day. But for now? Just taking my own advice to just commit to saying SOMETHING, rather than nothing.