A Home For Your Thoughts
"You Say WHAT???!!?"
Continued from page 15      By:  Kerry Bone and Mara Stein, PSY. D.
Perhaps they hope that by highlighting the "positive" aspects as they see them, they can ease your stress and suffering. The actual impact of these comments, though, is to minimize your grief and trauma, rationalize things that are intensely emotional and to disregard the complexity of what you are experiencing.

What sorts of things are being misunderstood in the above comments?

   ..how much we wish that we could have gained more weight, been more uncomfortable and had to wait to go into labor...if only to give our babies more time in-utero...
  ..how we long to have our babies with us and at the same time, how afraid we are of what is happening to them...how we sometimes fear that we will hurt them, or not be able to help them...
  ..how much we need to trust the doctors and nurses who care for our babies...how we long to be "in charge" but how terrifying that thought really is...
  ..that a newborn intensive care unit may as well be another country...it has its own language, culture and norms...and you are a stranger in a strange land -- at first...
  ..how quickly we come to see our tiny babies with the eyes of parents...they are beautiful, perfect, and adored...
  ..how we need their births recognized while at the same time, our grief and fear acknowledged...
  ..how alone, different, and foreign we feel from everybody around us..
  ..how we long for those differences to be respected, yet still want our desire to connect to others to be validated and met...
  ..how much we want others to "have a clue" and how sometimes, we just don't have the energy to be the ones to give it to them...

It can help enormously to have someone with whom you can talk about this experience. You may find yourself trying to educate others about what it means to have a premature baby, but don't feel as if you must educate everyone. Having even just one person who merely listens and allows you feel what you feel without having to apologize or explain will make a huge difference in how you cope.

Consider joining a preemie parent support group where you can discuss your feelings, vent, and most importantly, find others who have really do have a clue! Many NICUs have these groups available, or they can provide you with a support family who has already endured this experience and is willing to discuss it. If you have internet access, there are several excellent parent groups which you can join (for example, preemie-l at www.vicnet.net.au/~garyh/preemie.htm)

Realize, most importantly, that you are not alone -- there are others out there who have heard comments just like these, who have felt feelings akin to what you may be feeling, and lived through circumstances similar to yours. So often, by sharing your feelings with other preemie parents you feel normal, understood, and no longer alone.

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" -Henry David Thoreau

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