Mental health problems rooted in the NICU?

In the comments section of my recent post, Barb brought up the issue of infant trauma in the neonatal intensive care unit. My son was in the NICU for four days; my first son was in the NICU for 18 hours. Barb has worried about the impact of the experience on her own children and I was somewhat cavalier about its impact on mine. My attitude is rooted in my current approach to life, “if you can’t change it, don’t worry about it.” Yet I do know that it matters.

There is a wee bit of research on the subject, or perhaps the beginnings of research. But I am fairly confident that babies don’t just forget the early moments hooked up on vents and tubes. Frederick basically told me so on his second birthday.

I took the occasion of Frederick’s second birthday to describe to him the events of the day he was born. I kept the description nice and sweet: “we drove to the hospital, they took me into surgery, the doctors took you out of my tummy, and Dadda stayed with you in the baby hospital while they made sure you were healthy.” Of course, I added such things as “You were the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.”

A startling thing happened in the story. When I got to the part of Frederick’s stay in the NICU, Frederick began to cry inconsolably. I started to cry too and it still makes me cry today. (That is, of course, why I don’t think about the topic all that much.) Frederick’s length of stay and interventions were minimal compared to Alastair’s but I don’t know what we as parents can do beyond which we are already doing– loving our babies as much as possible. Keeping them close by breast-feeding them and wearing them next to our chest when they are sleeping are key strategies. (My favorite tool this month is a sling from Kangaroo Korner.)

Yep, there are a whole lot of reasons to avoid the NICU. I guess it’s appropriate that I have written this post by dictating (thank you MacSpeech Dictate) while holding Alastair on my lap.

Technorati Tags: depression, NICU