Well, that bandaid got ripped off (also known as trauma in the age of COVID-19)

Do you feel right now as if your heart is as vulnerable as it’s ever been?

Are you feeling unsettled? Are you experiencing intrusive thoughts, nightmares, hypervigilance, or rumination? How many of you, like me, are up at night wondering what life might look like next: physically (with regard to the virus), mentally (with regard to feeling scared, sad, anxious and isolated), or professionally (with regard to losing your job and/or financial stability)? How many of us are having fights with our loved ones and struggling on a daily basis? Achingly missing our parents or other friends and relatives on quarantine away from us? Our communities have been given information wherein the average family is sometimes treated dismissively, and the answers, if we are given any, are dim. We don’t know when this will end: the virus is terrifying, safety measures feel weak, and living with scant idea of how you’ll pay the next bill cycle is haunting. Literally nothing is predictable.

Correction: I suppose the only predictable thing is that nobody wants to get this virus, nobody wants to go bankrupt, and nobody wants to have a nervous breakdown— but the kicker is— nobody knows specifically how to go about absolutely preventing these things.

It is trauma, plain and simple, and the word we use: “trauma”, literally means to describe the things that make us feel the way we do right now: living in the shadows of our ideal selves. We find ourselves agitated, irritable. Sometimes sad, tearful, sleeping. We find ourselves checking whether we or our kids are clean enough, safe enough. We are using substances too much. We are physically isolated from the people we love. We wonder whether something or someone will hurt us. We are fearful, anxious. We find ourselves fighting with our partners, or kids.

We go into survival mode when we are experiencing trauma. We unconsciously predict what will next jump out of the woods to take us down (or read the news to find it out: murder hornets, anyone?). It is tough. It feels defeating. It feels like there’s no solution. It feels like we are bad people that attract danger. It feels like another shoe will drop at any time. It feels unsafe, it feels unresolvable. This is trauma. And these symptoms/reactions are what our brains do to survive inordinate circumstances.

I know all former NICU parents are already painfully aware of this, I also know that current NICU parents are unimaginably and enormously impacted by this (and it breaks my heart to no end and I wish I could help more). I also know that throughout this, my sister is taking her 8 year old son for chemo treatments— her family doesn’t get the gift of boredom or apathy throughout this, they don’t even get the gift to slow down and think about how shitty it is— unfortunately, too many people are in similar circumstances.

The pandemic, the political situation in the United States and elsewhere, and the interfamilial conflicts that we are all experiencing right now as a result of being locked down connect us in a certain way, even in this devastating situation wherein we feel so separated and paralyzed.

Sometimes, in times of uncertainty, the only thing we have left to hold onto is the knowledge that through our suffering we are deeply connected to others and their experience of it, too.

Remember this when you see others’ photos of seedlings or their food/dinner on social media and feel irked. Remember this when your toddler won’t go to sleep at bedtime, or starts to tantrum more and more often. Or when your tween or teen is in tears over the fact that they can’t go to a party with their friends or don’t want to finish their homework/attend a Zoom meeting. Remember this when you or your partner’s agitation gets to the point that you feel like you are OVER it and about ready to wave the white flag. Remember this when you continuously wake up feeling under the weather, and debate whether it’s COVID-19 or seasonal allergies, or when you are desperately trying to protect your high risk family members and the fear remains chillingly present throughout the day and night. Remember this when you’re trying to cope with everything simply not feeling right.

Right now, it’s ok to grasp onto whatever grounding you can and to accept others who do as well. Everyone is trying to get through this, everyone is uncomfortable, everyone is sad and everyone is scared. It’s not only ok to be gentle with our friends and family, but also towards ourselves. It is so tempting to think that someone else is doing something wrong in situations like these, but when you truly take in the nature of it all, it becomes apparent that the main thing is just to take care. Breathe in when it feels overwhelming. Imagine that we are all the same, because we are (mother earth and her methods have a way of mirroring this back to us now and again). Then breathe out, because it’s ok to express that energy and to release it (and yourself). I think the most important thing right now is to remember that we are all human, that we have no choice but to sit with each other, and hopefully, to connect.

So, 2020 is happening. From what I can tell, our worlds are being ripped wide open and shaken up, and many of us NICU parents are struggling not only with the stresses and anxiety brought with the global pandemic we are facing, but also with past traumas, past quarantines, past depression, and the memories that all of those experiences reopen. It’s because those parts of our mind have been ripped back open and are back in business. The feeling is mutual for anyone who has experienced or is experiencing trauma.

I had been embracing and loving the gift of “normalcy” after my daughter was born. She’s a beast and was born 4x the size of each of her brothers (8 pounds) and has a personality that reminds you of why people that are intense are fun. She has fury and passion. She likes wearing sunnies and playing basketball and following birds and examining artworks. She likes color and she likes interest. She likes wrestling. She shrieks intermittently at the various small animals in our household, and I think she enjoys that kind of language better than words. She’s, so very thankfully, healthy (side note: she loves quarantines.) She loves people. She’s like her brother.

The world decided to dole out another reminder, though, that there are no promises: that “normalcy” is a story we construct that makes us feel better— not a reality— and we should never take our gifts for granted.

NICU Parents: A Secret Society?

I remember the first time I walked into the NICU. When I was approved to go, my husband walked with me, showed me the hand sanitizer, and instructed me about the various policies about cleanliness. We walked in to find our tiny babies, who were on opposite sides of the full unit. Fluorescent lights glared onto the nurses, parents and their tiny charges, highlighting the dark circles under the parents' eyes and reflecting off of the plastic isolette that housed each baby.

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It felt as if a sense of dread filled the room, which was full of the sound of beeping alarms. I saw the red and green lights indicating each of my sons' vital signs, the equipment that was attached to all of the tubes and wires in their bodies thrumming loudly beside them.  I pressed my hands against the plastic of their cribs, afraid to touch my own babies and, at the same time, aching to reassure them that I was there.

The overwhelming sensory stimulation that surrounded me was jarring, and soon enough would become absorbed as unnoticeable in my daily reality. I looked at the people around me, my new community, and swore that I saw others who, like me, had tears welling in their eyes, reflecting the lights that would never dim.

For all of us, this environment would be our babys' home for days, weeks, and sometimes months. This was the NICU. 

Prior to going into preterm labor, I had never even considered that prematurity was a risk. I knew that having twins was a risk factor, but I knew no preemie parents, and had heard no stories of preemies. I hadn't known anyone who had had an especially traumatic birth or a medically complex baby. I had no idea. The night after I gave birth, I researched premature birth to the best of my ability, and found out that one in every eight babies born in the US is born prematurely. I discovered the March of Dimes, and read stories about these tiny warriors and their families. I realized that we were not alone.

The parent lounge in our NICU was sort of a ghost town; not that it was empty, but that oftentimes we silently walked past each other, each quietly dealing with the daily medical ups and downs of our babies on our own. Although we all knew that each one of us was contending with perhaps the biggest struggles we would ever face, there wasn't much regular communication. When times were tough, and perhaps we most needed support from parents going through something similar, paradoxically, the last thing most of us wanted to do was to leave our babies alone in the NICU so we could talk with others. What felt like the invisibility of our circumstances made everything that much harder to shoulder, and our inner emotional experiences of the trauma seemed all the more "abnormal". 

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Many parents describe the NICU as a kind of "secret society": a world that, prior to their own experience, was mostly invisible to them. As their babies stabilize or are discharged from the hospital and parents start to reach out to others that have gone through similar circumstances, they find themselves appreciating even the smallest of milestones, or suffering some of the greatest setbacks with a community that has a strong and compassionate understanding of what each other is going through. Unfortunately, due to the traumatic circumstances of having a baby in the hospital, in addition to the added isolation of quarantine after discharge, it can be challenging for NICU parents to have a chance to connect with one another.

What was your experience of other families in the NICU? Have you made connections with others in the preemie parent community since your baby's stay in the NICU? Are there any ways in which preemie parents can become more "visible" to the world around us, and if so, what is it that we need to say? I also get curious as to whether fathers are even more isolated by the NICU experience than mothers, and if there are any ways for fathers who have gone through this to more effectively find/construct their community?