Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: a concept I associate with victims of crimes or veterans of wars, not parents of preemies. But after reading an article in the New York Times, “For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last,” it’s clear that PTSD, and the awareness of its prevalence in parents with experiences with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (”NICU”), is key for parents of preemies.
I’ll never forget the unbelievable cocktail of emotions on the day our twins were born. Seeing them emerge, touching them for first time, and then watching the ventilators and symphony of sensors and other machines surround their precarious existence, I bounced back and forth between joy unlike I had ever experienced and a primal sense of dread and foreboding as I grasped for every possible action I could take to ensure their survival.
In the weeks that passed, the range of emotions continued as we celebrated each milestone in their development, and weathered set backs and false-positives of tests. Looking back, we’re oddly grateful for our NICU experience, both from the parenting skills we learned and the teamwork we practiced as a family. And yet, there’s no denying: the NICU takes a toll, no matter what the outcome.
The story’s profiled parent, Kim Roscoe, relates, “The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness. You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”
One of the most painful moments in my life was walking out of the hospital with Luca, celebrating his release, while feeling like I was abandoning Finnegan, who would remain in the NICU for a few more weeks before being released after another surgery and more ups and downs. When we finally had both of them home together, it felt we had been airlifted out of what was indeed a combat zone. Six months later, it seems like an eternity since our daily NICU watch caring for our little preemies while the monitors beeped incessantly around us.
As mentioned in the story, the March of Dimes runs a support community. “The most critical piece is to help prepare someone so they know what to expect and don’t fall into a world of frightening unknowns,” according to the March of Dimes’ family support director Liza Cooper.
That sharing of stories was the major motivator for us starting the Growing Twins blog, and writing posts such as this one is cathartic. Recently, a friend of ours gave birth to a baby girl nine weeks early, the same as when our twins were born (see: “This Week’s Walk Down Memory Lane.”) Through supporting her and her husband, we’ve been able to look back at our experience with fresh eyes, and are grateful for the chance to keep them both focused on the light at the end of the tunnel: bringing their preemie home from the NICU.
Are there long term impacts to us as parents as a result of our NICU experience? As a couple? As a family? To be sure, our twin boys are healthy and on track with their development, with no signs of long-term issues. But I still catch myself doubting my confidence and how I relate to each boy as an individual. I worry about over compensating as a parent, feeling like I need to protect them more than other parents because of their preemie history. But as one of our NICU nurses told me one day when I was particularly down facing what seemed like an ever-moving goal line of getting Finnegan home in the face of complications: “hey, he’s already forgotten all of this. You need to move past this as well.”
Easier said than done.
