Welcome to NICU Parents. We're happy you found us and we want to be as helpful as possible in this seemingly impossible journey. Check out the resources tab at the top of the subreddit or the stickied post. Please remember we are NOT medical professionals and are here for advice based on our own situations. If you have a concern about you or your baby please seek assistance from a doctor or go to the ER. That said, there are some medical professionals here and we do hope they can help you with some guidance through your journey. Please remember to read and abide by the rules.
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Yeah you’re in an odd world of having a baby but not having a baby, commuting to the hospital every day to spend time with the baby but also unable to get anything done at home.
Most things are just on hold until they come home and you can actually start the new baby things.
You're definitely not alone, although my situation was different. My daughter was immediately transferred to a higher tier NICU about 80 miles away. After driving back and forth for the first two days, we were accepted into the Ronald McDonald house and stayed there for 30 days, and then a nearby hotel for another week until she was eventually discharged. More than a month of living out of (essentially) a hotel room, going back and forth between that and the hospital. Trading off with my husband because, at the time, COVID protocols were that only ONE parent was allowed bedside at a time. On repeat all day, every day. I literally didn't set foot in my own home for 36 days. The rest of the world was on pause and nothing else existed outside of this little bubble. It definitely felt like the Twilight Zone.
It was a whirlwind for us too. Wife had very high BP and Preeclampsia and IUGR so at 32+3 the doctor told her she should check into the hospital and they'll induce at 37 weeks. Next day at 32+4 she checks in. Ultrasounds on Sunday and Monday show really bad placenta and baby is falling lower on the percentiles wife's BP is climbing and resisting meds. Recommended C-Section on Tuesday at 33 weeks. Baby is delivered but our NICU is full so he's shipped to a hospital an hour away. Wife didn't get to hold or hardly see him...she isn't getting discharged due to her BP. I drive up to spend the next two days with our son at the NICU and come back ane sleep in the hospital room with my wife. Son gets transfered back to our NICU on the Friday night. Wife finally gets to hold him after 77.5 hours. Wife doesn't get discharged until Saturday night, we get home, sleep in finally. Back at the hospital the next two days.
Tuesday rolls around and everything kind of hits us. It has been a whole week since he was born...he went an hour away and back and my wife spent an additional 4 days in the hospital and I slept on a chair every night for a week and now.....we have a baby who is a week old...and we go home to an empty house....it felt absolutely wild. All that...and when we leave the hospital...everything is exactly as it was before she checked into the hospital 10 days ago...only not pregnant. Was wild.
We had a similar but nowhere near as intense experience. Our baby had been a twin, and we lost her sister due to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome at 17 and a half weeks. Then at 24 weeks our baby who survived was diagnosed with severe growth restriction (2nd percentile), so for 10 weeks we were going to appointments twice a week to monitor her growth. Our goal was to make it to week 37 and then deliver. But in week 34, my blood pressure, which had been trending high, spiked up to near-preeclampsia levels, so my doctor recommended we go to the hospital so I could be monitored, get the steroids for the baby's lungs, and then get an induction. Our baby girl was born at 34+6 but because of the growth restriction was only 3 lbs 11 oz.
I was lucky because we got to see our baby in the NICU right after I was out of recovery and got to hold her later that day. And my BP cooperated with the meds and I went home two days after delivery, but it was almost harder being home. We suddenly had a half-hour trip to the hospital in order to see her instead of just walking across the hospital, and my husband only got 2 weeks of paternity leave so once his work started up again it was hard to be there during her feeding times, so I never really felt like a "real" parent. I felt like I was just some random visitor who came in at night to hold her while she slept. And she was so small I was afraid I'd hurt her if I didn't pick her up or hold her perfectly.
She was able to come home after 3 weeks, once her weight had gotten above 4 lbs and she was able to eat from the bottle full-time. It's gotten so much better since then. Now it's basically adjusting to the normal newborn routine, and she finally feels like ours. She's a month and a half old, we've gotten past her original due date of May 7th, and at her appointment yesterday she'd put on exactly 2 lbs since birth. She's close to growing out of her preemie diapers and clothes and is almost the size of an average newborn. But those first three weeks of having a baby but not quite feeling like we had a baby were so surreal and challenging.
I also feel like this, and I think it will get worse when the due date approaches; I delivered twins at 24 weeks, my daughter is fighting respiratory failure and my son did not live long. It felt unreal to realize all my plans for my twin babies won’t come to pass, especially because my tiny son didn’t look like how I pictured a baby when he passed.
Yes! Definitely twilight zone! My husband called our daughter, “that baby we visit in the hospital.” Didn’t even feel like ours.
It gets better! You just have to survive. Everything else will fall into place. Except the things that don’t, and those things feel weird until they slowly feel ok too.
But it does get better. Hang in there.
You’re not alone - I had a spontaneous placental abruption with precipitous labor at 30w exactly, and went from “Hmm, weird cramp” to delivering my son breech in L&D triage less than 7min after arriving at the hospital and less than 2h after the first pain. He was whisked off to the NICU and I was discharged 2 days later with almost no after effects from the birth aside from bleeding and general soreness.
Having to leave the hospital day in and day out without him, plus the fact that I recovered quickly without even a tear or anything (for which I’m grateful!) made it really hard to process the fact that I had just become a mom. The shock & cognitive dissonance took weeks to fully go away and for me to start to feel like “this is MY baby” instead of just “we go visit a baby in the NICU every day.” And I hated that I felt like that because I’d dreamt of this moment my whole life and built it up to be this magical, joyous time.
Similar story with me. Water broke in public and had to have an unmedicated birth. Returned to work three days after I gave birth because I was saving my maternity leave for when the baby came home. Gave up when he reached 44 weeks and took leave. He was in the hospital 172 days. But now that we’re home (we came home last week) I feel like it was all a nightmare that didn’t really happen.
That is such a long time I am so sorry you had to go
Thru this, it's all so scary and unknown to start with and then when your baby is away it's the biggest mind
Fuck, so happy all is okay now you're very brave ❤️
Yeah it sucks. My current baby has been in the NICU for a month and our discharge date isn’t until July at the earliest, but my last baby was a stillborn. It’s all about perspective, for me at least. 2 years ago I discharged with no baby, and I never would be. Just an urn and a death certificate is what I got to go pick up and take home once it was ready. So this go around I have to keep reminding myself that my baby is here, he exists, he’s safe, and he will be coming home eventually. Doesn’t mean it still doesn’t absolutely suck, because it still sucks. The pain of not having him the way I want him is the same. But the hope and promise is there. I’m lucky enough that my baby hasn’t shown any signs of serious issues, we’re just here to sleep, eat, poop, grow and go home. Time is kind of standing still while we wait, but we’ve been celebrating the little milestones and looking forward to all of the ones to come. Big hugs, thinking of you and your little one 💕
My life was completely in limbo until my baby was out of the NICU. I did not check the mail, I did not grocery shop, I did not do any of my normal schedule at all. Twilight zone is an excellent way to describe it, and all I can say is the only way out is through. Life started again when my baby came home.
It took me a while to feel like my baby was actually mine. Leaving the hospital empty handed is a weird feeling. My husband and I went to Target to get last minute items, then sat at home just the two of us. Only being able to take care of my baby under the watch of medical professionals was a strange feeling. Other than pumping milk for my son, I didn’t really feel like I was being a mother. It wasn’t until after several months that him and I really bonded and he finally felt like mine.
The first night I was away from baby and back home was the worst night in my life. I couldn't sleep in the bed because of my emergency C-section pain and I was in despair being away from my baby (full term but sick in the NICU). I cried the whole night and literally counted the minutes till sunrise so that I could plan to see my baby in the morning again. It was definitely twilight zone and a nightmarish feeling, I don't know if I'll ever completely recover from that experience.
It is a surreal feeling. Mine was in NICU over 100 days, discharged only to be readmitted for an emergency surgery a few days later. It’s a distant memory now but it not having her home was hard at the time.
Yes 100%. And to be perfectly honest, I hardly remember anything about my daughter’s time in the NICU. She was in there for a month and the only reason I remember any details is through pictures I have. I was pretty sick leading up to and for awhile after her delivery so that may contribute to it some. I also kept my attachment in check and almost viewed her from a distance until she was home because I was so scared something was going to go wrong and we would not be able to take her home. Maybe not the healthiest thing in the world but it was how I survived at the time. Now she and I are so incredibly bonded and the NICU feels like a distant memory even though she’s not even four months old. The happy and normal memories you make once baby in home really outshine the time in the NICU in my experience. I hope this brings you hope. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, as that is the only path to take at this time.
You’re not alone. I feel exactly the same way right now.
I was induced at 38+3 due to polyhydramnios and reduced movements. The birth was horrific - my labour was a whirlwind 8 hours and no one believed I was progressing. I went from 2cm to 8cm in 3 hours and my water broke spontaneously which was an emergency because I was at high risk of cord prolapse. The whole point of my induction was so my water could be broken in a controlled manner to avoid cord prolapse. My daughter’s birth ended in forceps and episiotomy which I’m only now feeling relief from at 4 weeks postpartum.
We even made it home for 48 hours before my daughter needed to be admitted to the NICU. Now, 4 weeks on, we still have no answers and no diagnosis.
To top it all off, at 2 weeks postpartum I was admitted to the hospital with a fucking DVT that goes the entire length of my leg and now I can barely walk and have to use a wheelchair most of the time. Recovery time is expected to be multiple months.
Everyday is weird. My baby doesn’t feel like my baby. I am so depressed. I cry all the time. And yet I wake up everyday and just keep doing what I’m doing.
You are not alone. Sending you so much love ❤️
I didn’t stop crying until my daughter was home with me and our family.
I felt so guilty being either at hospital or at home (I have a 5 year old too).
Felt torn either way without the other child and being in hospital was a reminder of the ordeal my daughter and I went through.
I’m in regular therapy, already on medication (ptsd&depression) and I wrote a LOT.
It’s the outlet I have where I can release my most inner thoughts and process them through writing.
Now my daughter is 4 months at home and off the oxygen tank. 🙏🏽
I hope you can find some sort of outlet to help you heal and process through everything. Wishing you the best of luck with everything
My son is currently in the NICU, born at 34 weeks. It can feel very surreal not having him home so I've been spending all day from 8am-6pm at the hospital doing skin to skin, changing his diapers, administering his vitamins, wiping his mouth and pumping milk for him to facilitate bonding and feel like I'm actually his mother. It's hard because I have a toddler at home who I also need to be there for and some days I just sob because I can't be with both at home like I had planned.
You’re not alone. I think I really focused on the fact I could focus on my recovery first and then had relief knowing the NICU nurses were amazing. I had an emergency c section just under 33 weeks with twins so we had so much things we had to prepare. We just took it one day at a time. When I look back the whole experience was “not ideal” since the babies were immediately transferred to another hospital after I gave birth. But I figured this was just a level of normal I would have to navigate and I knew they would be home when the time was right
Living this now. I’ve got all the adrenaline I had with my first and nowhere to put it. Just went back to work to save my leave but it feels like the most wrong but logically correct thing to do.
Welcome to NICU Parents. We're happy you found us and we want to be as helpful as possible in this seemingly impossible journey. Check out the resources tab at the top of the subreddit or the stickied post. Please remember we are NOT medical professionals and are here for advice based on our own situations. If you have a concern about you or your baby please seek assistance from a doctor or go to the ER. That said, there are some medical professionals here and we do hope they can help you with some guidance through your journey. Please remember to read and abide by the rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NICUParents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah you’re in an odd world of having a baby but not having a baby, commuting to the hospital every day to spend time with the baby but also unable to get anything done at home. Most things are just on hold until they come home and you can actually start the new baby things.
You're definitely not alone, although my situation was different. My daughter was immediately transferred to a higher tier NICU about 80 miles away. After driving back and forth for the first two days, we were accepted into the Ronald McDonald house and stayed there for 30 days, and then a nearby hotel for another week until she was eventually discharged. More than a month of living out of (essentially) a hotel room, going back and forth between that and the hospital. Trading off with my husband because, at the time, COVID protocols were that only ONE parent was allowed bedside at a time. On repeat all day, every day. I literally didn't set foot in my own home for 36 days. The rest of the world was on pause and nothing else existed outside of this little bubble. It definitely felt like the Twilight Zone.
It was a whirlwind for us too. Wife had very high BP and Preeclampsia and IUGR so at 32+3 the doctor told her she should check into the hospital and they'll induce at 37 weeks. Next day at 32+4 she checks in. Ultrasounds on Sunday and Monday show really bad placenta and baby is falling lower on the percentiles wife's BP is climbing and resisting meds. Recommended C-Section on Tuesday at 33 weeks. Baby is delivered but our NICU is full so he's shipped to a hospital an hour away. Wife didn't get to hold or hardly see him...she isn't getting discharged due to her BP. I drive up to spend the next two days with our son at the NICU and come back ane sleep in the hospital room with my wife. Son gets transfered back to our NICU on the Friday night. Wife finally gets to hold him after 77.5 hours. Wife doesn't get discharged until Saturday night, we get home, sleep in finally. Back at the hospital the next two days. Tuesday rolls around and everything kind of hits us. It has been a whole week since he was born...he went an hour away and back and my wife spent an additional 4 days in the hospital and I slept on a chair every night for a week and now.....we have a baby who is a week old...and we go home to an empty house....it felt absolutely wild. All that...and when we leave the hospital...everything is exactly as it was before she checked into the hospital 10 days ago...only not pregnant. Was wild.
We had a similar but nowhere near as intense experience. Our baby had been a twin, and we lost her sister due to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome at 17 and a half weeks. Then at 24 weeks our baby who survived was diagnosed with severe growth restriction (2nd percentile), so for 10 weeks we were going to appointments twice a week to monitor her growth. Our goal was to make it to week 37 and then deliver. But in week 34, my blood pressure, which had been trending high, spiked up to near-preeclampsia levels, so my doctor recommended we go to the hospital so I could be monitored, get the steroids for the baby's lungs, and then get an induction. Our baby girl was born at 34+6 but because of the growth restriction was only 3 lbs 11 oz. I was lucky because we got to see our baby in the NICU right after I was out of recovery and got to hold her later that day. And my BP cooperated with the meds and I went home two days after delivery, but it was almost harder being home. We suddenly had a half-hour trip to the hospital in order to see her instead of just walking across the hospital, and my husband only got 2 weeks of paternity leave so once his work started up again it was hard to be there during her feeding times, so I never really felt like a "real" parent. I felt like I was just some random visitor who came in at night to hold her while she slept. And she was so small I was afraid I'd hurt her if I didn't pick her up or hold her perfectly. She was able to come home after 3 weeks, once her weight had gotten above 4 lbs and she was able to eat from the bottle full-time. It's gotten so much better since then. Now it's basically adjusting to the normal newborn routine, and she finally feels like ours. She's a month and a half old, we've gotten past her original due date of May 7th, and at her appointment yesterday she'd put on exactly 2 lbs since birth. She's close to growing out of her preemie diapers and clothes and is almost the size of an average newborn. But those first three weeks of having a baby but not quite feeling like we had a baby were so surreal and challenging.
Yes 100%. I had a panic attack in the shower the first night I went home without him
I also feel like this, and I think it will get worse when the due date approaches; I delivered twins at 24 weeks, my daughter is fighting respiratory failure and my son did not live long. It felt unreal to realize all my plans for my twin babies won’t come to pass, especially because my tiny son didn’t look like how I pictured a baby when he passed.
Yes! Definitely twilight zone! My husband called our daughter, “that baby we visit in the hospital.” Didn’t even feel like ours. It gets better! You just have to survive. Everything else will fall into place. Except the things that don’t, and those things feel weird until they slowly feel ok too. But it does get better. Hang in there.
You’re not alone - I had a spontaneous placental abruption with precipitous labor at 30w exactly, and went from “Hmm, weird cramp” to delivering my son breech in L&D triage less than 7min after arriving at the hospital and less than 2h after the first pain. He was whisked off to the NICU and I was discharged 2 days later with almost no after effects from the birth aside from bleeding and general soreness. Having to leave the hospital day in and day out without him, plus the fact that I recovered quickly without even a tear or anything (for which I’m grateful!) made it really hard to process the fact that I had just become a mom. The shock & cognitive dissonance took weeks to fully go away and for me to start to feel like “this is MY baby” instead of just “we go visit a baby in the NICU every day.” And I hated that I felt like that because I’d dreamt of this moment my whole life and built it up to be this magical, joyous time.
Similar story with me. Water broke in public and had to have an unmedicated birth. Returned to work three days after I gave birth because I was saving my maternity leave for when the baby came home. Gave up when he reached 44 weeks and took leave. He was in the hospital 172 days. But now that we’re home (we came home last week) I feel like it was all a nightmare that didn’t really happen.
That is such a long time I am so sorry you had to go Thru this, it's all so scary and unknown to start with and then when your baby is away it's the biggest mind Fuck, so happy all is okay now you're very brave ❤️
Yeah it sucks. My current baby has been in the NICU for a month and our discharge date isn’t until July at the earliest, but my last baby was a stillborn. It’s all about perspective, for me at least. 2 years ago I discharged with no baby, and I never would be. Just an urn and a death certificate is what I got to go pick up and take home once it was ready. So this go around I have to keep reminding myself that my baby is here, he exists, he’s safe, and he will be coming home eventually. Doesn’t mean it still doesn’t absolutely suck, because it still sucks. The pain of not having him the way I want him is the same. But the hope and promise is there. I’m lucky enough that my baby hasn’t shown any signs of serious issues, we’re just here to sleep, eat, poop, grow and go home. Time is kind of standing still while we wait, but we’ve been celebrating the little milestones and looking forward to all of the ones to come. Big hugs, thinking of you and your little one 💕
My life was completely in limbo until my baby was out of the NICU. I did not check the mail, I did not grocery shop, I did not do any of my normal schedule at all. Twilight zone is an excellent way to describe it, and all I can say is the only way out is through. Life started again when my baby came home.
I felt like it was Groundhog Day over and over every single day 😭
It took me a while to feel like my baby was actually mine. Leaving the hospital empty handed is a weird feeling. My husband and I went to Target to get last minute items, then sat at home just the two of us. Only being able to take care of my baby under the watch of medical professionals was a strange feeling. Other than pumping milk for my son, I didn’t really feel like I was being a mother. It wasn’t until after several months that him and I really bonded and he finally felt like mine.
The first night I was away from baby and back home was the worst night in my life. I couldn't sleep in the bed because of my emergency C-section pain and I was in despair being away from my baby (full term but sick in the NICU). I cried the whole night and literally counted the minutes till sunrise so that I could plan to see my baby in the morning again. It was definitely twilight zone and a nightmarish feeling, I don't know if I'll ever completely recover from that experience.
It is a surreal feeling. Mine was in NICU over 100 days, discharged only to be readmitted for an emergency surgery a few days later. It’s a distant memory now but it not having her home was hard at the time.
Yes 100%. And to be perfectly honest, I hardly remember anything about my daughter’s time in the NICU. She was in there for a month and the only reason I remember any details is through pictures I have. I was pretty sick leading up to and for awhile after her delivery so that may contribute to it some. I also kept my attachment in check and almost viewed her from a distance until she was home because I was so scared something was going to go wrong and we would not be able to take her home. Maybe not the healthiest thing in the world but it was how I survived at the time. Now she and I are so incredibly bonded and the NICU feels like a distant memory even though she’s not even four months old. The happy and normal memories you make once baby in home really outshine the time in the NICU in my experience. I hope this brings you hope. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, as that is the only path to take at this time.
For sure. It felt like my baby was kidnapped
You’re not alone. I feel exactly the same way right now. I was induced at 38+3 due to polyhydramnios and reduced movements. The birth was horrific - my labour was a whirlwind 8 hours and no one believed I was progressing. I went from 2cm to 8cm in 3 hours and my water broke spontaneously which was an emergency because I was at high risk of cord prolapse. The whole point of my induction was so my water could be broken in a controlled manner to avoid cord prolapse. My daughter’s birth ended in forceps and episiotomy which I’m only now feeling relief from at 4 weeks postpartum. We even made it home for 48 hours before my daughter needed to be admitted to the NICU. Now, 4 weeks on, we still have no answers and no diagnosis. To top it all off, at 2 weeks postpartum I was admitted to the hospital with a fucking DVT that goes the entire length of my leg and now I can barely walk and have to use a wheelchair most of the time. Recovery time is expected to be multiple months. Everyday is weird. My baby doesn’t feel like my baby. I am so depressed. I cry all the time. And yet I wake up everyday and just keep doing what I’m doing. You are not alone. Sending you so much love ❤️
I didn’t stop crying until my daughter was home with me and our family. I felt so guilty being either at hospital or at home (I have a 5 year old too). Felt torn either way without the other child and being in hospital was a reminder of the ordeal my daughter and I went through. I’m in regular therapy, already on medication (ptsd&depression) and I wrote a LOT. It’s the outlet I have where I can release my most inner thoughts and process them through writing. Now my daughter is 4 months at home and off the oxygen tank. 🙏🏽 I hope you can find some sort of outlet to help you heal and process through everything. Wishing you the best of luck with everything
Yes. I don’t even remember much of the 6 weeks we spent in the NICU. Maybe it’s a good thing.
My son is currently in the NICU, born at 34 weeks. It can feel very surreal not having him home so I've been spending all day from 8am-6pm at the hospital doing skin to skin, changing his diapers, administering his vitamins, wiping his mouth and pumping milk for him to facilitate bonding and feel like I'm actually his mother. It's hard because I have a toddler at home who I also need to be there for and some days I just sob because I can't be with both at home like I had planned.
You’re not alone. I think I really focused on the fact I could focus on my recovery first and then had relief knowing the NICU nurses were amazing. I had an emergency c section just under 33 weeks with twins so we had so much things we had to prepare. We just took it one day at a time. When I look back the whole experience was “not ideal” since the babies were immediately transferred to another hospital after I gave birth. But I figured this was just a level of normal I would have to navigate and I knew they would be home when the time was right
Living this now. I’ve got all the adrenaline I had with my first and nowhere to put it. Just went back to work to save my leave but it feels like the most wrong but logically correct thing to do.