This Thursday as a part of Baby Week the Discovery Channel will air a program called NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit). It is satisfying to see the NICU elevated to a place where it is featured on prime-time television. Though as a parent-graduate of the NICU I feel I should watch the show, I’m not sure I can sit through it. Mmm. Let me be honest and change that. I’ve seen the trailers and I know – I won’t be able to turn on the TV at 10 PM on July 15. As my husband says, “I’ve been there. I know what happens.” Although our baby was a success story, a miraculous survivor of a one pound nine ounce birth, it is too hard to go back to the NICU, even on TV, even though the program is not about my preemie or her NICU or her doctors and nurses. The sounds of beeping equipment, the anxious parents standing helplessly at their babies’ isolettes, the sense of urgency, the sense that time will never pass quickly enough, the controlled chaos, the tiny, tiny babies with their myriad complications – they instantly send me back in time. Our daughter was born in 1986 and my husband and I – a doctor and nurse – are still not ready to sit through a television program about the NICU. And I suppose if we can’t do it 24 years after our child’s birth we will likely never be able to. Studies in recent years have found that parents of NICU babies suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That comes as no surprise to parents who have walked through the doors of a NICU and watch the calendar as their days in the NICU turn into weeks and then months.
So who should watch the program? As painful as it might be, anyone whose baby is in the NICU right now will very likely benefit from the information they will get from the show. There is so much to learn when your child is in the NICU – the way the system works, communication with the doctors and nurses, how to visit, when to visit, when you want to be there and when you don’t, how to communicate with your preemie, a preemie’s neurological development and level of awareness, how to advocate for your preemie, what medical technology can and cannot do, what complications to expect. This program, I imagine, will be NICU 101, a crash course for parents and families. Also watching should be friends and family of those with preemies, even if the preemie has graduated from the NICU, because the parents will likely experience some level of post-traumatic stress for some time after the baby has left the hospital, and it is incredibly valuable for the NICU family to be surrounded by friends and family who understand what their loved ones have experienced. Anyone who learns about the NICU will come away with a deeper understanding and empathy for parents of preemies, and will know better how to care and support those families.
It is probably an overused cliché, but having a newborn in the NICU really is like a roller coaster ride. There is no better way to describe the ups and downs, which occur weekly, or hourly, even changing within minutes as you stand in front of your preemie. One minute she is stable, all systems go, monitors beeping, ventilator puffing in and out; the next minute the baby has stopped breathing – she’s suddenly having and apnea spell – and her face has turned a deathly white. Her lips are blue. Her skin is mottled. And suddenly two nurses have their hands inside the portholes of the isolette. They reach in, detach the baby from the ventilator, and try to stimulate her breathing. They flick the bottoms of her feet. They attach her breathing tube to an ambu bag and artificially breathe oxygenated air into her lungs. They talk to her, they encourage her to “pick it up now, sweetie. Come on, you can do it.” They look at the monitors. They don’t look at you, her mother, because they are afraid, too. They aren’t 100% sure she’ll make it back from this apnea episode.
That’s why I can’t go back to the NICU, even on the Discovery Channel. And that’s why you should watch, so you will understand. It is commonly said that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case the true drama of the NICU is scarier, and more exhilarating, than anything TV writers can fabricate.

I’ve been reading the blogs of women who write about their premature babies, and though I delivered my preemie 24 years ago, the questions and issues in the forums and chat rooms are remarkably similar to what I experienced in 1986. I am a nurse practitioner and I have written a book, Small Wonder, the story of a child born too soon, about my daughter’s first year of life. She weighed 1 pound 9 ounces at birth and had a harrowing first year, but survived and eventually thrived in spite of terrible odds and a series of complications that go with being a preemie. Sarah is now a lovely young woman, out of college, working in Boston. I would not have written the book if Sarah hadn’t survived her rough beginning; or perhaps I would have written the story but I would have placed it in a drawer when it was finished and not have asked anyone to read it. The only way readers can stay with the story, they tell me, is because they know there is a happy ending. People often tell me they “cheated” and looked at the end of the book to see if the baby survives. When they find the photograph of Sarah as a young adult they are relieved and return to the story, but they go back to the photograph repeatedly to reassure themselves that the baby will be okay as they climb the Mount Everest of her first year with me.
I am writing in hopes that those who read and write about preemies will find this blog and use it as a resource. Care of the premature baby and the technology in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) has improved significantly and amazingly since 1986, and I can’t really speak to those changes. But the feelings and worries I read about – to breastfeed or not to breastfeed; bonding with a premature baby; what to do with the other children at home when you have a preemie in the hospital; sleep issues in preemies; depression in moms; anxiety in moms; marital stresses in parents of preemies – the list goes on. I would like to write about each of these and hear your thoughts in return.
Welcome, and thanks for joining me.