The people that you meet …

It’s true that under difficult and traumatic circumstances people often rally and band together. Maybe it’s a desperate attempt to find security, to lessen the fear. I think, perhaps, we are hoping to find a safer place, a place where a common purpose or understanding unify us and helps us get through the trauma in one piece.

 

Someone recently commented in our online support group that the people you meet in the NICU become the family you never knew you needed. This was certainly true for us, they were my lifeline inside those NICU walls but soon became a significant source of strength and inspiration “on the outside”. They are some of the strongest (and let’s be honest – strangest) relationships I have today and I am thankful for each and every one of them. It’s a unique bond and one I didn’t appreciate was so important until after we “broke-out” of that NICU.

 

When we first found ourselves in the NICU I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in meeting or even talking to other parents. The idea of sparking up a (genuine) friendship under those circumstances seemed ludicrous to me, even inappropriate if I’m honest. It took me many days (it might have even been well over a week) to say hello to the couple who were sharing our “pod”. This couple had seen my husband and I fumble our way into NICU life, they watched me cry uncontrollably as I thought our daughter was losing her fight and I would watch the monitor of their little boy for hours and pray for stability like he was showing. And when we did finally speak, it was incredible how so few words can show such understanding and compassion and, as the saying goes, the rest is history and they, and their remarkable little boy, will forever hold a place in my heart.

 

It’s an environment like no other. Some of my most raw and intimate moments were spent in that place and in view of others. Yet I never felt judged, in fact quite the opposite and, eventually, as your breath returns to normal and you find your NICU Rhythm, you start to build a social network. It’s seems weird, even now, to write that but it’s like a survival instinct I think, the most primitive of ones; build that village for protection, love and support and you will get through this.

 

But what I didn’t bank on was how connected you could be with these people that were strangers just weeks prior. I also found it odd how quickly you came to deeply care about them, especially their babies. Each milestone they reached you felt a sense of relief and pride, even love, as these remarkable tiny babies just kept kicking goals and defying the odds. And when things didn’t go well, the entire NICU felt that too. It’s phenomenal how a cup of coffee or chat at the breast-pump cleaning sinks can cement lifelong friendships – but they do!

 

And then there’s the people who you strike a bond with under the most horrific of circumstances. The passing of our babies, how can that be a reason to be friends, but it was and as time goes on it’s a relationship that I genuinely couldn’t be without today – kind of like my one place where I am understood and where my grief is accepted in whatever form it takes on any given day – because they are walking that path too!

 

Throughout our 115 days in the NICU, we were lucky enough to meet some truly amazing people and babies. And I know that wherever the road of life takes us all that we always be connected by our experience, we will always watch, with great anticipation, how each of our babies go and what their lives will entail and when we catch up it’s like no time has passed.

 

We will always be unified in by our time in that NICU and we will share a deep gratitude that, unless you’ve walked those corridors together you can never understand.

 

I am thankful for each and everyone of you – you know who you are!