To the NICU nurses who helped save my baby daughter: thank you.

Dear NICU nurses,

I’m not sure if you’d remember me. The 77 days I spent in your workplace probably isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things. After all, you see hundreds of families in the unit each year.

My daughter Violet was a patient in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Royal Hospital for Women (RHW) for nearly three months in 2020. She was born extremely prematurely at 26 weeks’ gestation and required round-the-clock care.

Image: Supplied.

Words won’t ever be able to express the gratitude we have for you looking after her when we couldn’t, including leaving her behind each night.

Along with monumental life-saving treatment, I got to witness the thousands of little things – and big things – you routinely did for her during those long, gruelling shifts.

I’m sure some of the duties you performed during those months might’ve seemed inconsequential and you wouldn’t consider them particularly special, just another part of your job. But they meant the absolute world to me.

And for that there will never be enough thank yous.

Thank you for holding my hand when my husband wasn’t allowed to be in the operating theatre during the emergency surgery.

Thank you for being there as soon as I woke up and wheeling me straight into the NICU in a hospital bed to see my daughter. I was drugged-up and shellshocked when I first saw the tiny 696-gram creature wreathed in tubes and wires inside her incubator.

Thank you to the nurse who was the very first person to say “Congratulations” to us for her birth. The panic I felt was unbearable, and congratulations was the last thing we expected as we feared for our baby’s survival, but it was just the reframe we needed. She was earth side, and that mattered – it should also be celebrated.

Thank you for placing her on my chest for our first ‘cuddle’ soon after. As part of ‘Kangaroo care’ or ‘skin-to-skin’, she was brought out of her incubator on her second day in the NICU. I couldn’t believe I was allowed to hold her fragile little body under your close monitoring.

Thank you for calming me down when machines started beeping and blaring during desaturations (oxygen dropping below normal levels) and apneas (a pause in breathing). And for teaching me what these meant. 

Thank you for being so qualified that you’re able to hold all these little lives in your hands.

Thank you for teaching me how to do ‘cares’. The NICU at the RHW have a Family Integrated Care scheme meaning we were taught how to wash her with cotton wool, take her temperature and change her nappy, all in her incubator, as part of daily cares that increased in frequency the stronger she became.

Most new mums are probably a bit daunted by the first nappy change but changing a nappy the size of a Shapes biscuit was downright terrifying. Not to mention the wires you have to contend with! I was still so scared to even touch her, but this got me over my fear quickly. 

You also showed us how to syringe bits of breastmilk onto cotton buds to act as a little milk lollipop, allowing her to taste my breastmilk as she was being fed through a tube. Being able to ‘parent’ or help even in this small way meant everything to us, so thank you. 

Thank you for the little bits of arts and craft that sometimes popped up at her station. The Father’s Day pictures, Halloween decorations, polaroids and the large ‘Violet’ picture that made the incubator look like it belonged to her instead of sterile and scary. And for the ink footprints we did together. 

Thank you for humouring me with a quick chat when you were able to. It was crushingly lonely not being allowed in the unit at the same time as my husband because of COVID restrictions.

Watch: Things nurses never say. Story continues after video.

Thank you for being patient and steady on the bad days. When anxieties sent me spiralling or she had to have a blood transfusion, the daily weigh in wasn’t what we’d hoped, or there’d been tests or vaccinations. 

Thank you for being there for the good days and celebrating NICU milestones. When she hit 1kg or when she was well enough to have less oxygen and moved down a level from headgear to less intrusive wires in her nose. And for explaining what the different levels mean. When she was finally strong enough to move from an incubator to an open cot. 

Thank you for helping me bathe her for the first time in a baby bath, carefully and expertly holding her little wires. I was getting more used to handling her by then, but I could never have done this without you.

Thank you for helping me breastfeed for the first time, again navigating the wires. Thank you for showing the techniques to get a premature baby to latch and how to hold them. Thank you for sharing my joy when it finally happened. 

Thank you for acknowledging the other daughter who we lost.

Thank you for being with me when she was weaned off breathing support completely and finally taken off all the monitors. This was a colossal step for us as we’d been so used to having her heart-rate monitored at all times. It was so hard to adjust to nothing at all.

Thank you for not only teaching me how to be a NICU mum but preparing me for being a mum post-NICU. There was a lot of coaching for the outside world involved in the last level of the NICU unit.

It’s now been over two years since we left. Our daughter is thriving, and we count our lucky stars every day. 

I want to thank you, most of all, for being part of the team that saved her life.

Please know that your faces will be permanently etched on my heart.

Thank you NICU nurses, for all that you do.

Feature Image: Supplied.