Encouraging Message: Picking Up the Pieces

Many NICU Parents experience broken dreams as part of the birth of their baby. Their initial dreams of a normal birth with a healthy child have been changed and NICU parents have to quickly adjust their reality to include having a child in the NICU.

This quote by artist and writer Flavia is a helpful encouraging message to NICU Parents to pick up the pieces:

If one dream should fall and
break into a thousand pieces,
never be afraid
to pick one of those pieces up
and begin again.

You can hear more about picking up the pieces by listen to the NICU Podcast or read the transcript that I created on "Dreaming New Dreams after Picking up the Pieces of Broken Dreams" at the NICU Parent Support Audio & Podcast Channel.

Image: Scott Snyder. Stained Glass. Royalty Free Use.

8/26 - Encouraging Message - Believe and Follow Your Aspirations

This message of encouragement comes from Lousia May Alcott, author of "Little Women" a reminder to believe in our highest aspirations.

Far away there in the sunshine
are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them
but I can look up
and see their beauty,
believe in them,
and try to follow them.

Louisa May Alcott

As a parent, we hold the highest aspirations for our child(ren) and dream of their beautiful future. This message of encouragement is a helpful one to remember and to hang on to during the times when it may be difficult to believe.

Keep looking up, keep believing and keep following those dreams.

Photo Source: Manoel Silva. Clouds. Royalty Free Use.

7/30 - Comforting Message - The Loss of a Child is the Loss of the Future

Today's message is more about why dealing with the loss of a child is so difficult for parents. The comfort perhaps comes from the knowledge of why the death of a child at any age is so challenging.

Children Don't Die First...Do They?
In the natural order of things, children grow into adulthood, marry and have children of their own. Children aren't supposed to die before their parents. Yet sometimes, children do die leaving parents behind to grieve.

Arnold and Gemma in their book, A Child Dies A Portrait of Family Grief, described why parents feel so distraught, depression and despair following the death of a child:

Children are not supposed to die...Parents expect to see their children grow and mature. Ultimately, parents expect to die and leave their children behind...This is the natural course of life events, the life cycle continuing as it should.

The loss of a child is the loss of innocence, the death of the most vulnerable and dependent.

The death of a child signifies the loss of the future, of hopes and dreams, of new strength, and of perfection.

I think for many it is the death of the dreams, the death of hopes and the death of their future that is the most difficult for parents to fact following the loss of a child, at any age.

Quote Source:
Arnold JH, Gemma PB. A Child Dies A Portrait of Family Grief. Philadelphia, PA: The Charles Press Publishers. Second Ed. 1994.

These thoughts are also featured on the Squidoo lens, My NICU Baby has Died.

Photo Source: Phil Landowski. Dust to Dust. Royalty Free Use.

7/23 - Comforting Message - Struggling for Your Dreams

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats.

No one can avoid them.

But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams,

Than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Paulo Coelho

NICU Struggles
I think if you would talk to most NICU Parents many would use the words "struggle," "battle," and "challenge" to describe their time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

I know what I was battling for shortly after my daughter arrived in the NICU. I was fighting to keep my daughter strong enough, in whatever ways I could imagine, and struggling to have her stay on this side and not cross over (not to die).

Dreaming New Dreams
NICU parents have to quickly adjust to the fact that their dream of taking home a healthy happy newborn shortly after delivery is not going to happen.

MOD Family Support Specialist, Melissa offers these words of wisdom:

This was not what you were expecting.
You had dreams of this precious child being born and going home. Storybook fantasies of being a mom...filled your dreams at night.
This is the way you believed things would be...
Not spending your baby's first days in an intensive care unit.

Sometimes we have to sit back and accept that we are working towards a new normal. Our normal.

Melissa
Share Your Story

Sometimes we have to step back, let go of the old dreams and begin dreaming new ones.

The dreams of NICU Parents are often postponed and changed. Dreams of going home with a precious baby...change to ones of having a healthy, happy, peaceful baby at home...at some point.

Source:
Melissa. Baby in the NICU. Share Your Story. May 2, 2007.

Photo Source: Dick Herrmann. Sleeping Baby. Use with Permission. www.lakepeople.de