Babies in NICU

Holding on to life

S. Tenuta                                 3-22-25

Babies are born.  Babies want to be born.  Babies experience birth.  Babies are living beings.  What happens when a baby comes to earth and finds itself having difficulty adapting to this earthly environment?  What happens when the baby has a physical abnormality? What happens when baby is deformed or lacking the enzymes or proper blood counts for survival here on earth?

In the past, many of these babies died soon after birth.  The babies experienced life on earth, but only for a short time.  Parents accepted their gift and their loss, realizing the fragility of the beautiful gift of life and the sadness and emotions that can be lived out when life of a baby leaves soon after birth.  In the years past, this may have been a calm way to live.  Life and death were both acceptable.  They were both realized as normal paths, either short or long lived.

Today, many of the birth challenges can be overcome by medical surgeries, or procedures, prolonging a baby’s life.  If the baby has a physical imperfection, often the surgery can repair things such as a cleft lip, or a heart valve, or a twisted stomach or a tumor.  I wonder what the baby thinks about these procedures.  Is the baby happy to have another day to live or to struggle to survive?  Does the baby feel so much pain and discomfort that baby would rather leave us?  Are the physical repairs good things?  The baby would get to live longer.  Sometimes that longer could be longer in a wheel chair, or longer with crutches, or longer with hearing aids or longer to lay on a bed for the rest of their lives.  Is the person happy to live every moment no matter how difficult it may seem?

When a baby lands in NICU, what is going through baby’s mind?  Are there times when baby just wants to be out of here.  If so, what keeps the baby here?  Can the baby feel the love of the doctor performing the surgery?  Can the baby feel the love of the parents radiating toward them so they just want to stay here as long as possible? 

One time, when my baby had a heart coarctation of the aorta surgery, I had the trepidation and fear for my child.  I so loved the baby.  I had the baby blessed prior to surgery.  I prayed for that baby.  I held the baby as much as I could.  I played and sang songs to the baby so baby could hear my voice and hear my words of encouragement to recover from the surgery.  I wonder if baby had an experience of dying and then came back to his body.  I wonder if he felt the love I was sending.  Is that what helped baby to recover?  He was one who did not sleep after surgery, but rather was so energized, that all he wanted to do was play.  I was worried he would be injured, but he just kept going.  I was surprised, but learned that some people react to the anesthesia in such a way.  Babies in NICU have a trauma to experience and to process later in life.  Babies in the NICU are also resilient, and often overcome challenges in surprising ways.  When babies don’t make it through the NICU, these babies, I believe could not recover, or could not feel the love radiating towards them or just decided they could not deal with the challenge ahead. 

Babies are intelligent, though we can not understand them yet.  When people survived such experiences as babies, and go to therapy later in life, they are found to have carried traumas in their muscles or unconscious memories.  Sometimes the NICU traumas have unintended residue in the person’s life.  When they re-experience their trauma and imagine a different outcome, these processing encounters, can help the baby live a happier or more satisfying life. 

If you have a baby who goes into the NICU, recognize and acknowledge your baby’s experience.  Show that you want to understand and that you have love for the baby as baby somehow processes its experience.  This will help baby to live a life that is not blocked to other unpredictable experiences of life.  Acknowledge that the baby is possibly trying to tell you how hard it was to get through the challenging procedures.  Baby has a consciousness.  Baby, according to perinatologists, want to be heard, even if not by using words.  Baby wants parents to know its feelings and needs.  Do find a way to let baby know you understand and love him no matter what the difficulty is.

Babies in NICU are intelligent.  Babies in NICU want to be heard.  Babies in NICU are suffering, and need love radiated to them.  This love can help them survive, and if they don’t survive, it will give them the blessing to know they were loved before they leave us