NICU Life and the Risk of Post Traumatic StressI recently came across this article in the NY Times related to the risk of post traumatic stress disorder in parents of babies who have spent time in a NICU. For anyone who has had a baby in the NICU, you understand just how stressful a time it can be. My son was born 9 weeks early but was healthy considering his prematurity and really just spent the next 5 weeks in hospital “feeding and growing”. Yet, the experienced of seeing him so smail and frail, poked and examined, stuck with endless needles, attached to wires, and attached to IV lines in eventually every appendage including his head, did certainly cause a lot of stress and anxiety. It took me a long time to come to terms with the experience and allow myself to grieve the loss of my expected pregnancy and childbirth experience. I believe my son also still deals with the impact of his premature birth everyday; not in obvious ways, but in smaller more subtle aspects like personality and coping ability. I wonder how exclusively pumping would factor into the risk of post traumatic stress in mothers of premies? I know when I was pumping I felt like it was a battle and I was very often just operating on adrenaline. I felt like I was in a battle to provide what I could for my son since I felt as though my body had let him down which resulted in his premature birth. The fear of illness that is mentioned in the article, I attempted to alleviate by providing breast milk. The thought or mention of weaning was enough to put me over the edge and cause great stress. Would this all have been different if my son was born full term? I don’t know, but I imagine some of my fear and anxiety would at least have been reduced. I was particularly struck by the mention that once parents are ready to start discussing the experience, those around them are not interested in talking about it anymore. This is so true and I think true as well for mothers who exclusively pump. While you are in the experience, your focus must be on doing the job and making it through the other side. There is no luxury of dealing with it. But once you get to a place where you can breath again and are capable of sorting through your emotions and experiences, it seems the world has moved on. What are your experiences with the NICU? Is the trauma and stress something that you carry around with you? Do you think Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is common in NICU parents? What kind of support did you receive to cope with your experience? 5 Responses to “NICU Life and the Risk of Post Traumatic Stress” Leave a Reply |
 
 
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September 3rd, 2009 at 8:44 pm
My son was born 13 weeks early. He is currently in the NICU and I never thought anyone would understand what I feel. I was told my chances were great and I unexpectedly went into labor. Logan, my son, has been in the NICU since August 10th when he was born. He was 2 pounds 2 ounces, but doing wonderful. His breathing tube was taken out the second day and his IV’s a week later. I hated seeing him with an IV in his arm and his forehead. I feel like I let him down and the only thing I get to do for him is to pump and make his food. Pumping has been hard and so has the entire experience. I have my fiance there for me, but he works 12 hours a day. I know he is doing everything he can for us, but it’s hard not having someone to support me when I need it.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Hi Kaylynn,
Congratulations on the birth of your son! These little babies are so special. You are most certainly not alone in this, although it can often feel this way. Reach out to other moms in the NICU for friendship and understanding. This can sometimes be difficult due to the privacy issues in the NICU but these are the women who are going through exactly what you are right now and they too understand all the stresses and challenges.
The best advice I can give is to allow yourself to grieve the loss of what you expected childbirth to be. Allow yourself to feel whatever emotions you feel and don’t believe you must always be strong and held together. While those around you are often focused on the baby, I found that people often forgot to ask about me and did not recognize how difficult the experience was on me. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, or space, or whatever it is you might need. And definitely take care of yourself.
While it may feel as though all you can do for your son is pump and give him milk, you are much more than that to him. If you are not already doing so, do lots of kangaroo care with him- skin to skin holding- and continue to wear him and keep him close as he grows.
Take care,
Stephanie
October 10th, 2009 at 10:42 am
My daughter was born a week ago at 31 weeks. I lost a baby boy last December to preterm labor at 22 weeks and even after taking every precaution under the sun during this pregnancy, my daughter was also born preterm. So far she is doing very well - she was off her CPAP after 12 hrs and off her IV within the first week. Like your son, right now she’s just feeding and growing. I’ve been committed to pumping and so far have had no issues with my supply or keeping up with her feeds. I also have a 4 year-old son so between taking care of him, pumping, and the trips to the hospital, it’s been quite tiring. But the worst part of all is leaving my daughter in the NICU. It’s so lonely in there, I hate that she’s all by herself, and my heart breaks every time I have to leave her. I just want her to be healthy and grow so I can bring her home.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:41 pm
I felt exactly the same way while my son was in the NICU. From the moment he was born, I felt like I’d failed him by not being able to provide him an environment he could grow in prenatally- and I feel like I robbed my fiancee of his only chance to be present at his child’s birth (this baby is to be our only one).
I had a really high risk pregnancy, and a diagnosis of IUGR at 32 weeks, and suffered from people who thought “WOW, YOU DON’T EVEN LOOK PREGNANT!” is some kind of huge compliment. I wore my “skinny jeans” for the first 6 months of pregnancy. I missed out on the “pregnancy” part of pregnancy. The congratulations, the people smiling at you, cutting in line in the bathrooms (lol)… I got funny looks from people who knew I was pregnant (they thought I was anorexic) and completely ignored by people who didn’t know- including women who actually hit on my fiancee in front of me because they “assumed [we] weren’t serious.”
I had NSTs and ultrasounds twice a week starting at 32 weeks. At 35 weeks, I went in for my visit, and during the NST my baby’s heartbeat dropped very low, they rushed me in for an ultrasound, and saw my fluid level was lower than the week before, and he wasn’t practice breathing, so I got sent to the hospital for observation for the night. My fiancee and son came to visit then left to get my son to bed for school, and within 1/2 an hour his heartrate was dropping again, and what seemed like seconds later, the nurse came back in and said my Dr was going to perform a c-section and take the baby. Within 20 minutes, I had a baby that I’d never seen. All I knew was that he had the cord around his neck 3 times, and since there wasn’t enough fluid, everytime he moved, he was compressing the cord.
For me the NICU was more stressful than I thought it would be because there wasn’t one at the hospital I was in. My baby was shipped to a hospital an hour away the night he was born… I got to hold him for 3 minutes first while I was fighting to stay conscious- the spinal did a number on me! I spent the rest of my time in the hospital feeling like a woman without a baby- I had to recover from my c-section before they would release me, but I was in a maternity ward listening to babies cry, and not knowing what my own baby sounded like.
I busted my butt to get out after only a day and a half- forcing myself to walk around even though I felt like my stomach was ripping out was the key, lol. Then I spent the next week and 5 days feeling torn between my baby in the NICU and my son who had to be in school where we lived. We spent over $300 on gas to drive back and forth, and more than that on fast food. Luckily once my milk came in, my baby started nippling, and I was able to take him home fairly soon. He was only 4 lbs when I brought him home, about 2 weeks ago, and he’s already over 5 lbs… of course now I’m pretty sure I’m losing my milk (I have to pump and add 22 cal formula to raise the calorie level for him) so I freak out at just the thought. I have a rental pump that I’m torturing myself with every hour, hoping to restimulate supply, but I just never had the quantity of milk I had with my first son.
So… PTSD? Yeah, I can see that. Between needing to have my baby sleep in the same room as me at all times so I now he’s still breathing (not having those monitors on him freaks me out!) to worrying about my milk supply to the point that I have cracks on my nipples- I can’t remember being this stressed in my life.
December 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Wow, So let me start by saying i am so thrilled i found this site. I thought (and was told) for the longest time that i was crazy about the feelings i had about the child birth of my first baby Gavin. Being pregnant for the 2nd time ive thought alot about the NICU and complications of pregancy.
I had PreEclampsia badly with Gavin and the doctors decided to induce me almost 2 months early. The labor and delivery were a nightmare, the nurses and doctors were horrible, rude and acted like they had better things to do…(i was plesant and tried to stay quiet, besides in pain, super swollen and scared I’d ask questions and have eyes rolled at me.) and when my son was born, they wisked him away even tho he was screaming, and scored very well on the scale- without letting me even glance at him. Later i found out there was really no reason for this since he was doing so well.
it took them 3 days to let me out of bed to see the baby, (The doctor took that long to come back to see me, and stop the treatment for Highblood pressure.) When i finally got to go down to the nicu to see him no one prepaired me or told me what i would see.
All the wires, the weird tubes, the sick babies around… and i do mean very sick babies… weird noises and the acrid smell of astringent cleaner. Was this really the way i get to see my baby for the first time? Devistated was an understatement..i wanted to run away and flat out just die. It was made all the more better by the male nurse on staff who treated me like i was a moron because i couldnt figure out how to pick Gavin up with all of his wires attached. You can imagen i already felt like a horrible mom for him being so early and having to be here anyway… A day later when i had the same issue trying to pick the baby up a nurse picked him up and handed him to me and stated: ” this is what you get when you dont care for yourself during prenancy” … PTSD is that feeling of you KNOW you did everything you most possibly could and no one around you sees it. The Nicu is a frighting place and was not a good experiance for me no matter what way i looked at it. My son got exellent care but my mental state by the time it was over was less than good. My hoity-toity mother in law didnt help this experiance in the slightest, she gave me the “well, shes right” look. (my mother in law is the kind of woman who told me flat out that i am a bad mother because i wouldnt get off the bloodpressure meds and heart pills to breastfeed. therefore my son was bottle fed formula.)
He was only in the nicu for 2 weeks but it felt like an eternity.
Make sure you have a good suport system and doctors. I had my son at [edited to remove name of hospital]… They have no sence of bedside manner or respect for sick women. They treated me like i was a bad mom from the time i showed up there.
I cant stress enough to you ladies who find yourself wondering about the NICU to go investagate it, Do it while you are pregnant, I am sure there are several nice ones around and it all cant be bad and if it happens to you no matter what- you remember it is a sure bet that it is NOT YOUR FAULT your child is in the NICU. It happens. it happens to the best of people. if you are hurting over it and feel lost, talk to someone about it!!!! dont wait for 5 years like i did…
I took good care of myself during my pregnancy i ate a rounded diet and tried my best to exercize. I was sick from about 4 months on with super high bloodpressure it made it hard to do anything without feeling like i was going to pass out. The only thing my pregnancy lacked and i swear to this day it would have made the difference was loving people who suported me though it. I am not a hard person to be around, infact i’m very loving and friendly and never have a bad thing to say about much. I never missed a prenatal pill or a doctor apointment and i still had one heck of a labor delivery and NICU visit. 5 years later and i still dream about it.
Thanks for letting me share
I really just wanted to say that PTSD does happen and its normal, you’re not alone.