Am I a soldier or a civilian  I do not know.  I have always known that the NICU is a terrifying, mind-numbing place of noise, and stress, and death.  This coming from me, a seasoned nurse.  But to a parent who is sitting at the bedside of their baby, their love, the NICU is a war zone.  It is a fight.  It is a fight to keep their baby alive.  A fight to have a say on how their child is cared for.  It is a war of ups and downs and highs and lows.  It is a fight of fear versus hope.  It is a fight to keep your mind from wandering and drifting off into insanity from the stress.

I know having a baby in the NICU is stressful for parents.  I have seen marriages crumble, families face bankruptcy, and parents become physically ill from the stress of the situation.   I know these things on an intellectual level, but I have avoided thinking about the emotional aspects of parent’s surviving a NICU experience.

Think about it.  There is great hope for the baby to survive.  One day the baby is doing great.  “What a champ.” -says the primary care nurse.  The next day, the baby is being rushed to surgery for necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition unique to preemies, where their intestines essentially start to die.  One minute you feel safe and confident, the next you are planning a funeral.  But your baby survives.  You sit at the bedside and watch as painful after painful procedure is performed on you child.  (I can not  see my kids get a simple immunization.  Imagine a lumbar puncture). You watch and listen as other parents babies suffer and face medical emergencies day in and day out.  Is my baby next?  You can not sleep, waiting for the middle of the night phone call telling you to come to the hospital.  Even when your baby is doing well, you worry.  Will this last?

The NICU is a war zone.  Studies have shown parent’s who have survived the experience to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I can see why.  Those of us who work in the NICU tend to focus all of our time and energy on saving the baby’s life.  That is our main focus.  The parent’s can be a casuality to that.  The last thing we would want to do is send home a fragile newborn to a fragile parent.  Work needs to be done.

RR