NICU Revisited

I am about to willingly walk back through one of the most difficult times in my life. The time in my life that defined me as a parent. The time that Forever defined my children. Those days and months that changed everything.

For the past few months I have been attending meetings and training sessions at the hospital where the boys were born, their home for the first five months of their lives. My home the first five months of their lives.

I am volunteering. I will be talking to parents who are experiencing the NICU like we did almost six years ago. I will be attempting to offer support, comfort or just someone to listen to them, some one who has been there, someone who understands.

I was so luckily, if you can call it that, because there were people with whom I shared my NICU experience. Those people are still an integral part of my support system. My friends, the people who to this day get it, my lifelines in a time when life was so fragile and tenuous. Not every family is that lucky. In spite of the fact that 1 in 8 babies is born prematurely, most parents of preemies have no one to talk to who really understand because they have been there.

In the years since the boys discharge, I have talked to a number of parents who are having difficulties in the NICU, lending an ear, a supportive comment, or a suggestion. I have talked to parents with kids with feeding issues, I've talked to parents worrying about what to do with their preemie once they go home. These were all referrals from our former nurses, OT's, teachers or educational therapists. This is much more formal. I even have a pink badge granting me access to the NICU so familiar to me from all those days in the NICU.

I am going to formally introduce myself to two families tomorrow. I am filled with anticipation and a little fear. I hope I can offer the support that these families need. I hope I can keep the flood of memories at bay. I hope I can use them to the benefit of those families. I hope that I can just offer them what they need most...HOPE.