The Grief of a NICU Mother: Part 1
Five years after my daughter was born, I still avoid looking at the first photos that were taken of us after her birth. I never shared them with anyone outside my immediate family. I certainly never posted them on social media. They are not what I had envisioned.
I dreamt of the perfect photo that everyone shares after having a baby. I would be holding my baby skin to skin, looking exhausted and blissful. To this day, I still grieve the loss of this moment. It often goes unacknowledged, but it’s something every parent of a NICU baby loses. Those first, beautiful moments holding your baby skin to skin. I can imagine it, but I’ll never get to experience it.
To have your baby immediately whisked away after delivery defies every natural instinct that a mother has after bringing a human into the world. This human that has been growing inside of you, a part of you, for months, is suddenly separated from you. You come out of the delivery riding the oxytocin high, the relief knowing the pain is over and you and baby are safe, and then from the highest of highs you come crashing down to the lowest of lows.
For me, the low began a few hours after delivery when my nurse aroused me and gave me a manual pump to try and stimulate breast milk production. Here I am holding this piece of plastic that I don’t even know what to do with when I should be holding my perfect baby, letting her try to nurse. I knew I had to do it so I would have a chance of successfully breastfeeding her later, but it was awful. I wish someone had acknowledged in that moment how distressing it felt.
I wish that more medical providers recognized how traumatic my experience was being separated from my baby immediately after birth. I could not even go visit her myself the first 24 hours after she was born because I was too unstable. My nurse brought me to visit her twice in those first 24 hours. I spent less than 60 minutes with her in total. While the focus in high risk, complicated deliveries is to keep mom and baby safe, I wish someone had realized the damage this was doing to my mental health. Five years later, and I am still deeply affected by my experience those first hours after my daughter was born.
We are so fortunate to live in Boston, with access to some of the best medical care in the country, and had an amazing team. However, we need to do a better job incorporating mental health care into our medical care during high risk deliveries.
I decided to title this post The Grief of a NICU Mother: Part 1 because my grief could fill endless pages. I’m not sure yet which part I will share next, but I know that there is certainly more to share.
