My awareness of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was nonexistent until I started spending my days with my nose pressed against the isolettes in which my daughters lived. “I used to be your house,” I would tell them. “And you thought this was a better option?”
I have a tumultuous relationship with awareness months. How helpful is it to become aware of something when you’re already in the throes of it? Sure, donations for the Prematurity Research Initiative may eventually result in more effective prematurity prevention, but that means nothing to the woman in a hospital bed praying for her labor to stop right now.
NICU awareness is different.
This month is for you.
This month is for you to become aware of what you can do for the woman in a hospital bed whose labor didn’t stop. It’s for you to become aware of what you can do for the family in shock over their big, beautiful, full-term baby needing surgery and a NICU stay. This month is for you to learn that whether we—the NICU mamas of the world—expected it or not, the NICU is bullshit.
The NICU is a place where you make decisions that could be the difference between life and death, but you have to ask permission to hold your baby, and sometimes the answer is no.
The NICU is a place where you wait for the proverbial shoe drop for weeks or months at a time—a place of perpetual disappointment.
The NICU is a place where babies die and mothers grieve.
But when you make it through the bullshit, you end up with something beautiful.
The NICU is the only place full of people who understand what happened to us—a place full of my people.
The NICU is the place where the tiniest milestone achieved by the tiniest people are celebrated in the biggest ways.
The NICU is the place where my daughters got the chance to fight for life—the place that made us all who we are.
This month, I’m running my first 5k of the season to raise money for NICU Awareness. Donations go to support families suffering through the bullshit on their way to something beautiful and the healthcare workers that make it all possible. Please join me in supporting our family’s favorite cause. Donate here.