“Once you get home from the NICU, everything will be okay! It’s just a short period of inconvenience and then life will be normal again.” My friend’s intentions were pure, and at the time I believed what she said to be true, but the reality couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I thought once we got home, the NICU experience would be behind us and we could move forward with normal life, whatever that was.
That wasn’t what happened.
It wasn’t until after we got home that the processing began. It was as if the entire 39 days in the NICU, I’d been in survival mode and now that we were home, the reality of what happened hit me, including just how “not okay” everything that happened was. Those 39 days of trauma had created wounds that were just now starting to heal, creating ugly scabs with physical and emotional symptoms I despised. It was turning me into a version of myself I didn’t recognize or like. I began to realize how painful and arduous that healing process would be. It was once we were home that the flashbacks began and the overwhelming sense of panic and reality set in, the understanding of how close we came to death.
At home, some things did get better but other things got worse. I finally felt like I had a new baby, rather than a baby I visited each day. My four other children got to meet their little sister for the first time and I was overwhelmed with gratitude that our new family of seven was finally all together, at home, where we belonged. For nearly six weeks, this was what I had been waiting for, and now that it happened, why did my heart still feel so troubled?
I realized those weeks in the NICU were not going to be forgotten as quickly as I hoped, and that the metaphorical wounds would take time to heal. It took months of talking, thinking through events, and reading medical records to realize what even happened, and trying to understand what it was that bothered me so much. Slowly but surely, the pieces began to come together as I sorted through my jumbled mess of emotions and events. I realized what hurt me most was that so many hands got to touch and hold my child before I did, as she was too unstable to be held for nearly four days. I felt robbed of knowing the first few days of my baby’s life, time I would never get back. I hated knowing I had to leave my two-pound, two-day-old baby in the hospital miles away while I briefly went home to visit my other four kids. All the plastic tubes keeping her alive made me feel incapable and unnecessary. It didn’t seem fair that this was how her story started and there was nothing I could do about it.
In many ways, her being born at 31 weeks stole moments from us that I had with my other children—those first cuddles, the skin-to-skin, being the first one to bathe her or feed her or change her diaper. I hated that those things were all done by strangers. For the first months of her life, it seemed there was more fear and pity for her than joy. When people found out she was born so early, there was a lot of sympathy and not a lot of congratulations. It felt all wrong and I wasn’t sure how to move forward.
Now my little girl is almost 5 months old and time truly has lessened the pain, although healing is not complete. I have officially spent more time with her than away from her. Finally, we have more “normal” moments than traumatic moments. She feels like my baby now, one I no longer have to ask permission to hold, or feel afraid to touch. I know nearly losing my baby and spending her first weeks of life in the hospital have allowed me to look at life through a different lens. I am so thankful for the privileges I once thought I was entitled to, like easy births or healthy babies. I am so grateful to the Lord for His mercy in saving my daughter’s life, and for using a difficult situation to teach me so much about faith, contentment, and healing. My baby’s NICU stay changed me forever and I am grateful.
by Stacey Skrysak 
by Jillian Benfield 
