A Personal Reflection
Megan St. Marie holding her daughter in the NICU, 2006
Four of my seven children, a son and three daughters, came home to our family through the foster system here in Massachusetts. They were at different ages when placed with us, and the youngest of my daughters was a tiny newborn when I first laid welled-up eyes on her. I emphasize the word “tiny” because she was a preemie, born about ten weeks early, and social workers matched her with our family while she was still in the NICU. At her smallest, she weighed just 2 lbs. 14 oz., and though she was over 3.5 lbs. by the time of our first meeting at the hospital, she still seemed impossibly small. She made my then-toddler elder daughter—a petite 5.5 lbs. when she was born four weeks early—seem downright cherubic in her newborn photos, and she was less than half the weight of the full-term son I’d had nine years earlier.
Under the excellent guidance of the doctors and nurses in the NICU, I gingerly held this tiny baby girl, fed her, and even changed her playing-card-sized diapers, marveling at how fragile and strong she was all at once. “This baby is the best eater here,” a nurse told me one day. “We have to feed her first, and she drains her bottles in a flash!”
In addition to visits from our family and the social workers assigned to her case, my daughter’s birthparents also visited her in the NICU. I will always be grateful that this was possible for them. She received so much from her biological parents—her impossibly long eyelashes, her curly hair, and her warm brown skin; her artistic talent; her broad shoulders; her height; her extroverted personality—and I know she also benefited from their loving visits in the NICU, and from knowing these took place, even if she can’t remember them today.
My certainty of the importance of those visits was reinforced by a recent book project I was honored to work on at Modern Memoirs, Being With You Is Everything: Discovering Your Baby’s Voice by Deborah Buehler and illustrated by Annie Zeybekoglu. They describe it as “a little book with a big message,” and although it seems like a children’s book with its small trim size (6” x 6”), brief text in verse, and illustrations on each spread, it is actually a book for parents and other caregivers of premature and at-risk newborns. It even includes blank journal pages to prompt caregivers’ written reflections on the tender, sometimes scary, sometimes hopeful NICU days.
Buehler’s gentle, spare, affirming text is written in the “voice” of a NICU infant, inspired by her experience working with the Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP). This evidence-based caregiving approach was founded by Buehler’s mentor, Heidelise Als, PhD, in the early 1980s. In the blurb about the book on our online shop, Buehler explains that through training, resources, and support of NICU professionals, parents, and other caregivers, “NIDCAP helps premature and at-risk infants be understood and to have a voice in shaping their experiences within the hospital and beyond.”
I don’t know if the hospital where I first met my daughter directly worked with NIDCAP or deliberately employed its methods when she was there. But the fact that they did all they could to support my daughter’s birthparents’ presence with her, as well as our family’s efforts to bond with her while she was still in the NICU, affirms that they embraced NIDCAP’s primary aim of enabling intimate, nurturing connections between parents and premature and at-risk newborns. Without saying the exacts words of the title, their guidance and encouragement of our presence told us, “Being with you—all of you—is everything to this little one.”
The hospital also adhered to NIDCAP’s core principle of avoiding overstimulation, to enable sleep and avoid stress. I learned this lesson when I was told not to read black-and-white, high-contrast board books to this little one as I’d done with my older children as infants. “Too much stimulation will keep her from sleeping, and she needs to sleep to grow,” a nurse gently told me. “Just hold her and let her close her eyes.”
“I think not of how quickly time moves, but of how precious time with our children is, at every fleeting stage.”
Humbled, I put away the board books for later, thinking for the first time in my life that maybe there was such a thing as too much reading! But this interaction with the nurse showed me that even though I had already parented two infants, I had a lot to learn about caring for a vulnerable preemie.
Being With You Is Everything could be read aloud with babies once risk of overstimulation is at bay, and I imagine that parents will also read it alone, or perhaps silently while they rock their tiny, sleeping babies. They can write notes in the little journal section about their experiences, observations, and feelings. As they read or write, they will be affirmed of the vital role they play in their babies’ development, counteracting the common feeling that they are getting in the way of doctors, nurses, and life-supporting equipment, and easing the sense of helplessness and inadequacy that can emerge when faced with the needs and vulnerability of a premature or at-risk newborn.
When she finally tipped the scales at 4.5 lbs., we were allowed to bring my daughter home—in something called a “car bed” rather than a car seat so that she could lie down perfectly flat, which we were told was safer for her little body. A year and a half later, her adoption into our family was finalized, a day I mark with her each year to honor her birth family and the losses that premise adoption, and to share gratitude that we are family. And now, I am preparing to bring this youngest daughter of mine to her college orientation in late August. “How is this even possible?” I find myself thinking in anticipation of that day. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that I held her in the NICU?”
These questions are their own answer when I think not of how quickly time moves, but of how precious time with our children is, at every fleeting stage. I know this day is possible, in part, because of how my daughter was held in the NICU—by our family, by her birthparents, and by caring hospital staff and social workers. She received excellent care when she was at her smallest and most vulnerable, and she received an abundance of love, too. “Being with you is everything,” she told us when she gripped our fingers, eagerly took her bottles, and nestled into our chests to sleep and begin to grow into the remarkable person she is today.
I wish I’d had Buehler and Zeybekoglu’s book when my daughter was in the NICU, for the validation it could’ve provided and for its journal pages to act as a memento of those early days. What an honor it is to help bring this “little book with a big message” into the world. What a joy it is to know how it will be a part of many families’ lives for years to come.
To purchase Being With You Is Everything: Discovering Your Baby’s Voice by Deborah Buehler and illustrated by Annie Zeybekoglu, please visit our online shop, Memory Lane Books & Gifts.
Please contact Modern Memoirs, Inc. directly to discuss bulk at-cost purchases for hospitals and other institutions, or to find out how your bookstore or library can purchase wholesale copies.
Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.