Being Thankful at Thanksgiving in the NICU

Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks and expressing gratitude. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine still being grateful when your baby is in the NICU.

We were lucky with our NICU daughter that the only holiday we spent was Easter (she was actually transferred to a higher level of care NICU on Easter Sunday).

This YouTube Clip from Q13 Fox News Seattle shows how one hospital was making Thanksgiving a bit brighter for NICU parents.



For this Thanksgiving I'd like to share a quote on gratitude which may help NICU parents facing the chaos and confusion in the NICU:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melodie Beattie

May you still be able to express gratitude this Thanksgiving, even if it is being spent in the NICU. I hope that you will find a sense of peace for today and a vision for tomorrow.

More:

Dyer KA. Encouraging Message - Balancing on a Tight rope and Gratitude in the NICU? NICU Parent Support Blog.

7/22 - Encouraging Message - Balancing on a Tight rope and Gratitude in the NICU?

I stumbled upon this quote and realized it perfectly expresses many of the sentiments and emotions felt by NICU Parents:

Walking this tight rope called life
learning to balance
and look down to see
if the net is there yet...

Liz Elayne

Many NICU parents keep looking for the net as they carefully and delicately balance family, work and other life demands with the reality of having a baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Another interesting note was that this post was taken from a series of posts where the author was taking a polaroid photo every single day, counting the days and marking the passage of time; something else frequently done by NICU Parents.

Gratitude in the NICU?
In her blog, for each of these entries, the author also has included a few words about the moment and lists the things she is grateful for, perhaps a difficult task, but something else that NICU parents might be able to do.

One of my favorite quotes that helped me get through our NICU experience was one by Socrates:

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap
whence everyone must take an equal portion,
Most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

While sentiments may not work with all NICU Parents and in every situations, I know with my daughter, we were constantly grateful, looking at other situations faced by some of the other parents, that things could have been so much worse.

For that we have always been very grateful.

Source:
Elayne L. Day 71. March 12, 2007. http://seekgratitude.blogspot.com

Photo Source: Modified Microsoft Images.