"It's okay to need support"

Within the first week of having my son, it sank in how different his arrival was from what most new mothers experience.  Worry and concern had firmly set in and I went back and forth between wanting to tell people how I felt to wanting to hide it so that people wouldn't think anything was wrong with him.  A friend of mine is an ob/gyn surgeon and because she worked at FMC she was one of the few people allowed to visit while I was in the hospital recovering from delivery. She said something that stuck with me in the first few weeks we were in the NICU, when we felt most afraid.  She said quite plainly, "it's okay to need support, that's all they're doing is giving him a little extra support until he catches up".

Several weeks later, another mom said something to me along the same vein.  This mother was in the NICU for the second time; she suffered from preeclampsia and had had spent more than 100 days in the NICU with her first child and was approaching 3 months with her second.  She explained to me that she recoiled every time someone suggested that her children were sick. In her eyes, they weren't sick they were just early and needed some time to develop before coming home.  

Over the next 7 weeks in the NICU I learned that there were so many people willing to help provide my son with that love and support.  The neonatologists, nurses, residents, dieticians, nurse practitioners, respiratory technicians, lactation consultants, unit clerks and other staff all played a role in supporting him as he fed and grew.  

No one wants their child to start off life as a sick child.  I realized that these two friends were right; the people around me took their cues on how to treat my son from how I viewed/described the situation.  From then on when people asked me how he was doing I answered that he was just a little tiny and early but doing well.  And he continues to do well - at 9 weeks adjusted he smiles, coos, lifts his head, holds our gaze and is an impressive 12 lbs.  All he really needed was a little love and support along the way.