There really is nothing like the comfort of curling up under a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night. (Granted, I live in California, so those cold winter nights may still be somewhat of a novelty.)
However, the tiny warriors in our local NICU are on the verge of experiencing a blanket shortage. I am asking for your help. Continue reading
Sunday, Sept. 15, was National Neonatal Nurses Day. They deserve a day. The infant mortality rate can be a measure of a nation’s health and social condition. So these amazing people really do hold the world in their hands. Continue reading
Fifty years ago the issue of prematurity rose to the forefront of the national conscious with the brief life of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. Born at 35 weeks, a late-term preemie who’d likely have only the briefest of NICU stints today, the first child born to a sitting U.S. president since 1893 spurred the burgeoning field of neonatology after his death at less than two days old.
This week the New York Times published an op-ed on the ethics of the heroic life-sustaining measures now available to infants at increasingly younger gestational ages. It should not surprise you that this piece sent the preemie community into a tizzy. Continue reading
Comments Off on The Value of Life
I write a monthly column over at AlliOSNews. It’s a techie site – extolling all the goodies and gunpowder on the Apple OS. (SHINY TOY!) I’m TechMom. And these are my stories on how technology is really used. This is what you must deal with as I am a Silicon Valley nerd by day.
(I’m well aware it’s Wednesday. If you want TechMom Tuesday on Tuesdays, head on over to AlliOSNews for all things Apple. TechMom Tuesday is typically published the first Tuesday of every month. I reserve the right to rant more or less as the technical goings-on, well…go on.) Continue reading
Jon found me on the couch reading. “Wow. Are you reading a real book?”
And indeed I was. It was a paperback, not my standard digital iAppendage. A Pound of Hope – the story of miracle micropreemie twin boys by Jennifer Kemper Sinconis. Continue reading
There have been murmurings that “A Year Without Santa Claus” is the best Christmas cartoon out there. Fear not, good people, I am here to reassure you such a ridiculous claim is patently false.
Obviously such accolades belong to the one true story of Christmas. “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Continue reading
This is Mommyhood is the mother of a manic toddler. She’s an anxious, depressed giant book nerd. And her little hummingbird on crack (man, that nickname even beats the muppets) even did a stint in the NICU.
What a difference a year makes.
Home. A year ago Saturday that was my post. Destroy came home from the NICU on August 6. Tomorrow, August 9, is the anniversary of Search’s homecoming. Continue reading
I am speaking at the local Mothers of Multiples club on a panel about the NICU and hospital stays. Regular readers will know that I have *many* opinions on this topic. In fact, I have so many opinions on it that my first stint on lockdown is what started the words pouring out.
So below is a plethora of unsolicited advice: Doing time in the NICU is rough. It’s overwhelming.
So many people have babies born too soon. When Jon and I began our experience as “preemie parents,” I was amazed at how many stories we began hearing. It seemed almost everyone we knew had been touched by an early birth.
I vividly remember the NICU walk every day as we went to visit the muppets.
Now, Pampers has launched “Love Comes Early,” an 8-episode Web series that follows one family as they navigate life in their local NICU and fight to nurse their daughter Addyson, born fifteen weeks premature, to health.
I watched this and it seemed all too familiar. But in honor of Prematurity Awareness Month, I wanted to share since it seems a great way to show you what it’s like – for any parent going through this. Our stories are all different, but all too similar.
