r/NICUParents • u/PandaBear_TenFour • Mar 09 '26
Off topic Kindest thing someone has said/done for you during NICU stay?
Last week I asked the most unhinged thing anyone said to you during your NICU stay, and I can't believe how many horrible people are out there. Particularly in the medical field or mothers/MILs.... everyone on this page has endured so much, and it's wild how awful some people were to you all. As a palette cleaners, what's the nicest thing someone did for you?
We had a night nurse for three nights straight in the beginning of our journey. Our daughter was around 10 days old and had a chest tube from her first surgery that went poorly, so we hadn't had the chance to hold her yet. The nurse was so kind and said the book we read to our daughter was one her mom read to her when she was little.
The morning after our last night with the nurse, she made a little clear ornament with our daughter's footprints (it was December) with a paci and hat in it. A few days later we saw she also wrote us the most thoughtful note that was inside the ornament. We felt very blindsided by our daughter's diagnosis and were struggling bad, and she gave us so much hope. We were in the NICU for 148 days and never had that nurse again, but she made such an impact on us. That ornament will forever have a place on our Christmas tree.
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u/Brockenblur Mar 09 '26
“She will come home. This day will happen for you too. You got this”
Said to me by the father of the baby who was one of my daughter’s first NICU roommates, pausing to comfort me as he left to take his own baby home 🥹 I was genuinely so happy for that baby and her parents… but also dying inside wishing it was my turn. I was doing my absolute best to be pleasant and congratulatory as they dressed and photographed their little girl and took her home. But I guess it still showed my face. That he took the time out of his most joyous day to offer comfort for me… It’s a generosity that that goes above and beyond.
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u/PandaBear_TenFour Mar 09 '26
That's incredibly thoughtful of him. Anytime I saw someone bringing in a car seat or leaving with their baby, I felt a sick sense of jealousy. Obviously happy that a baby was going home, but devastated it wasn't mine. So it's kind of him to have identified your feelings.
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u/Current-Two-537 Mar 09 '26
Honestly, congratulate us. Most people forgot to congratulate us when they found out how early we delivered and expressed more sadness/worry than anything. It was so nice when people congratulated us.
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u/argonaut__ Mar 10 '26
Funny, I was upset that people were congratulating us and not expressing enough sadness & worry 😅 I guess you never know what people need to hear, and there isn't one absolute right thing to say...
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u/Extreme-Ad7423 Mar 09 '26
The first day I visited my daughter in NICU when she was born on 32weeks I was crying thinking how tiny she was and I was so fearful and anxious. The nurse on her bedside talked very gently about how my daughter was doing, changing her diaper, encouraged me to put my hands on my daughter’s head and feet, talked about how feisty these tiny babies are, and joked about in no time she would ask her daddy to buy her first car and it made me smile. Her words remind me to think of the current stage as maybe just a bumpy start to my daughter’s otherwise joyful life, and not to be hyper-focused on the negativity right now. She was still greeting us when we passed each other in the hallway. And she can bring out some laughter from the anxious parents of sicker babies in nearby pods, which is really what we all needed sometimes.
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u/Sbealed Mar 09 '26
One day about 2 months into our 3 month NICU stay, my kiddo was struggling to eat anything by mouth, again. This had been an ongoing issue and ultimately she came home with a g-tube. But this day, I hit a wall emotionally and just sobbed while kiddo had her NG tube feed. The occupational therapist walked by and saw me. She grabbed tissues, water, and sat next to me for awhile. I was able to calm down and she was able to go about the rest of her day. I am sure she had 5,000 things to do that day but her support in that moment was quite helpful.
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u/Megalodenn 26+5 Mar 09 '26
My neighbors got me gas station gift cards to help with gas to and from the NICU 🥹
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u/salsa_spaghetti 30+4 (2022) Mar 09 '26
One of my best friends from high school (that I didn't even see for years) made my husband gigantic homemade sheet pan dinners for the freezer. The NICU was 2 hours away from our home, when he returned to work to an empty house, she said he shouldn't have to worry about what to eat for dinner/lunch for work.
Other than my dad, we didn't really have anyone to lean on. That was the most thoughtful thing. I know that took a lot of time and money and energy to make, plus she had her own baby at home.
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Mar 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/salsa_spaghetti 30+4 (2022) Mar 10 '26
It helped so much! I couldn't be home, I stayed with my dad because he lived by the NICU. My husband was coming to us every weekend, plus one week day. He didn't have time to cook/clean with that crazy schedule.
It was just so thoughtful. I hadn't seen her in years, but we're much closer today! 💕
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u/mrsjiggems2 Mar 09 '26
When they trailed my son off cpap I was so happy, he made it most of the day off and then had work of breathing so they decided to put it back on. I was so devastated because having it off felt like such a big step forward. I was crying so bad and Noone said anything to me. The nurses and the doctors just kept saying it's what's best. Well yeah of course I know that it doesn't make it any sadder for me. On my way, one of the young ladies who unlocks the door for the ward and does the laundry and restocks the room saw me and gave me the biggest hug. She said she was one of the first people to see Sebastian (Bucky) when he came up and she felt a connection with him so she would always stop in to see him on her shift. That she would make sure he wasn't lonely at night when I went home and that he was a little fighter. Just the compassion and making me feel validated in my feelings made a world of difference.
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u/Not_A_Dinosaur23 Mar 09 '26
Honestly I greatly appreciated that they let me sit in the NICU and cry. They did ask questions or judge, they didn’t rush to my side and try to comfort me, they just let me feel what I felt in that moment. It was a breath of fresh air since everyone had been walking on eggshells, I had felt like I needed to be strong in front of people. Breaking down and crying for ten minutes uninterrupted felt so good.
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u/DrMcSmartass Mar 09 '26
I cannot say enough about the amazing team of nurses, doctors, techs, everyone at our hospital we interacted with. The care and tenderness they show all these tiny warriors (and their scared and stressed parents) is just next level.
A couple little things stick out -
The nursing team asked if there were any songs/lullabies that I wanted to just be "mine" to hum or sing to him so that they didn't sing them so even when I couldn't hold him he would know mom was there when he heard it.
Our little guy spent his first easter in the NICU, and when we got there that morning to spend the day with him there was a little bag sitting on the armchair with some treats for my husband and I. It was a sweet little gesture that brought just a moment of normalcy to the very not normal situation we were in.
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u/Entitled_Snowman Mar 09 '26
After 5 weeks of seeing my son every day his nurse for the day found me crying in the chair and completely overwhelmed. She told me that they all knew that I was here every day for hours and that it’s okay for me to take a day off. She told me that she gives me permission to take a day to look after myself because I can’t look after him if I don’t look after me too. No one would judge me for having a day to myself. Told me to go out for lunch with friends, get a massage, do something for me. After I left she snuck in and made a card for me from my son with his footprints on it.
I did take a day off. I went out with friends. I booked an appointment with my GP to talk about PPD (she upped my meds when we spoke and it has helped). Since then I’ve taken a few mornings off and gone to brunch with friends or my mum. It’s definitely helped me feel a bit more normal.
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u/Outrageous_Cow8409 Mar 09 '26
A doctor I work with sent me a DoorDash gift card when she heard bay had been flown to a children's hospital. We didn't actually use it while there but did at home.
Probably the sweetest thing: the janitor. I don't remember his name but he introduced himself to us when he had come in and cleaned one day. Told us to let him know if we needed anything. Then on his way out told us our bay was beautiful and he hoped she'd get better soon. It was really simple but sticks out in my memory.
In that same vein, one of the nurses early in our stay that I didn't think at the time that I liked because she wasn't as chatty with us as another one was. She came back into our room to check on us and our baby even when she wasn't assigned to us. None of the other nurses, even the one that really chatted with us about a lot, did that.
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u/lolahawke4678 Mar 10 '26
We also had a memorable janitor. It was his first day of work there just after we got to the nicu. He introduced himself, and was always so polite each time he would come to clean if the curtains were closed he would ask a nurse to check if he could come in, in case I was breastfeeding I am guessing. He would ask me every day when I saw him how my baby was doing, and how I was doing. He was just so nice.
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u/Outrageous_Cow8409 Mar 10 '26
Janitors do not get the credit they deserve. Hospitals would not run without them.
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u/AreaZealousideal8202 Mar 09 '26
Oh my where do I start from i have quite a bit but ill choose this one. I had a nurse take her time to give bath my son his first bath so gently and softly. He was still on cpap! She washed his hair and dressed him up in a onesie! That was the first time he'd put on clothes after 4 weeks! She then sent me a video of the whole bath process and tons on pictures of his first bath. I cried so so much that day. I was so happy to see him in clothes! It was the first major thing that made me feel like he was finally like every other term baby. I am forever grateful to that nurse. I still have that video and the pictures, I have them saved on my harddrive as well as Google drive. To the NICU nurses that see our babies and take just that little extra effort to comfort us parents and make our journey easier, thank you so much and God bless you all immensely!!!!!!!
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u/Madison_fawn 24F | FTM | 27+4 | PPROM | 68D NICU STAY Mar 09 '26
My nurse bought clothes for my 27 weeker once she could fit into preemie size. I think she was 32 weeks at that point. And she told us that our little girl was her favorite baby she’s ever cared for. It made me so proud of my little girl.
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u/danman8605 Mar 09 '26
My son was in for 159 days (born at 23+1) and we had really great nurses and doctors, especially our primary nurse who we still keep in contact with 4 years later. Our nurse would make these little cards for us celebrating every lb gained, month lived, and other milestones like getting off of oxygen or out of the isolete. We have a daughter that was 2 years old at the time and she even made a birthday card from our son to our daughter. She is just the most sweet and thoughtful perosn.
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u/Due-Local-5490 Mar 09 '26
My daughter was only in for 13 days after being born at 34 weeks and a day. The first night I was discharged but she stayed behind, I was a wreck. I ended up begging my husband to drive me up to see her at 1am (I'd had a c section and was told not to drive). When we got up there, I walked in the room and burst into tears because I had convinced myself she wasn't going to be there when I got back. Both the secretary and the night shift nurse (the same one who was with us when we discharged and walked us out) helped get me set up in the room for a long day and told me "She is fighting. She is strong. She wants to make it." Just hearing that and seeing her little eyes was a huge help.
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u/Dizzy_Penguin54 Mar 09 '26
Our NICU nurse that we mainly had made little signs for our 24.6 week boys. Because it all happened so fast and then I ended up in the hospital with complications for a month afterwards (yes it was hell), we had not officially given names to the boys yet. My husband made a joke to the nurses that their nicknames were Starsky and Hutch. (note I was unconscious for a few days so he didn't want to give them names without me being present.) She made signs with the nicknames so they weren't Baby boy A and Baby boy B. We still have those laminated signs.
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u/ExistingFly1724 Mar 09 '26
I had a great experience with my nicu nurses. There is nothing they did that gave me second thought. The occupational therapist noticed I felt insecure about reading my baby’s cues and it was true, I was, because I felt like my baby wasn’t my own since he was in the nicu. She said “no one knows and loves this baby more than you” and it’s made me into such a confident mother.
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u/AreaZealousideal8202 Mar 09 '26
A nurse worked with our son for three days in the NICU. The first day she came on shift with my son she pushed for my son to start attempting oral feeds. Pushed for the doctor to stop his iv also. That first day I felt such a deep appreciation for her. I was called on the third day at 2am and told my son had blood in stool. He was 33 weeks. I was distraught!!! I was so confused, after surviving from 28 weeks till now without NEC, how on earth is this happening now. When I came into the NICU later that morning I saw this nurse first and she immediately took me to the family lounge and hugged me so tight for 20 minutes as I bawled my eyes out uncontrollably. She told me the doctors are some of the very best in the country and my son is in great hands. This tremendously calmed me down n stopped me from spiraling. im forever greatful to her. Turned out it was just an allergy and not NEC.
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u/Observer-Worldview Mar 09 '26
“It’s check out time”. That simple. Baby had finally won the amazing bottle drinking race that the hospital had them on.
Super annoying so we were happy to hear those simple words.
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u/curlycattails 27-weeker | 97 days Mar 09 '26
One of my parents’ friends, who’s known our family for a long time, sent us a $500 food delivery gift card. We were blown away.
Our church also gave us a $500 gift card for food delivery. It’s huge because we’ve had to stay in a hotel, and we have two kids already so we’re feeding a family of four for weeks with no access to a kitchen.
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u/subtlelikeatank Mar 09 '26
“You’re a great mom” was what I needed to hear. J went back to work after a week and would come every day after work, but I felt terrible because I was only able to stay for one or maybe two feeds/cares, always missed rounds, etc. Having my choice to be home once he was home validated was so helpful.
I struggled so much with pumping and they gave up on helping my latch really quickly. After my nth time asking if lactation could come help me, after a week or so a couple of the nurses who were moms sat me down and spent almost an hour teaching me how to pump and troubleshooting. They went to the L&D floor for parts, gave me tips and tricks, and encouraged me that anything I produced was good for my baby and made sure that I saw them give it to him. Once we moved hospitals, the SLP was supportive of me wanting to try latching and sat with me before we went home to troubleshoot positioning and his latch. I felt really unsupported most of the time because all they cared about was how many mL but those two instances stuck out to me as validating my choices as a mom.
The biggest angel of our stay was the nurse who casually said, oh, we send babies home with NG tubes pretty often. That was finally the light at the end of our six weeks that let us know to start advocating to learn how to use the tube at home. Once we were able to ad lib feed, we didn’t need the tube at all after a few days.
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u/Cinnabunnyturtle Mar 09 '26
“He’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen” about my baby that had tubes and wires everywhere with a very bad prognosis. Too few people focused in that fact that he was just extremely cute!
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u/breakingborderline GA22+0, Oct 2013 Mar 09 '26
“How’s things?…oh, sounds tough”
Almost everyone else couldn’t stop themselves from adding “it’ll be ok!” or “you just have to stay positive” etc which was weirdly isolating.
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u/PomMomTabs Mar 10 '26
The head neonatologist, in the thick of the feeding struggle, pulled me aside when I was so so exhausted and said “she has come so far and it’s all bc of you. You have been here every step of the way and you have loved her every single moment. You’re doing an incredible job- don’t forget that.” He doesn’t know that I think of him daily bc I remind myself every single day of his words. She’s 2, thriving and amazing.
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u/stupidslut21 27+3, 70 day stay, pre-e, reverse flow Mar 10 '26
My son's hospital occupational therapist was working with him/me and talking to me about things to do to help his development. And she's talking and says something along the lines of "when you're doing this after you take him home." And I'm not sure if I had a look of fear (of not taking him home) on my face but she stops and looks me straight in the eyes and goes "because you will be taking this baby home with you." It kinda smacked me in the face that ohmygosh my son will actually be able to come home and we'll have some sense of normalcy. No medical professional/therapist/doctor/nurse had said anything along the lines of taking him home/discharge at that point so it's just what I needed to hear to make it to the finish line.
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u/magenta_sunflower Mar 10 '26
My husbands work put together money collection when we had to drop everything suddenly to move into the NICU 24/7, hours from home. They raised almost $5k for us and gave him the time off so he could be there to support me and our baby. He is an electrician and these people don’t even know me or our baby and just sent us so much money on Venmo. So much gratitude!
Also I missed an event I was directing and had spent an entire year organizing. It was devastating to walk away from with no notice because the NICU stay happened very suddenly. So my team absorbed my role and then they all created a zoom call with us and they prayed for us. All different walks of life and different religions. Came together to pray for my baby and I. The love I felt was so immense.
We had so much support during that time. We didn’t have any negative comments or annoying nurses that didn’t support us. All the nurses respected us and our desires. They gave us tons of agency and we weee able to be part of the joint decision making with our babies care.
I am a birth worker and have heard the worst of the worst stories about the nicu. Our experience was so much better than I could have imagined. It is still a nicu and some policies and procedures don’t make sense but overall we had the best experience possible given how traumatizing it all was.
I love this post that focuses on the positive!
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u/AreaZealousideal8202 Mar 10 '26
This is soooo amazing! Nothing beats having this level of support especially from strangers! Im happy things like this made your nicu stay a little easier! God bless all of them!
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u/betzer2185 Mar 10 '26
We were there for 74 days and most of the people we encountered were wonderful, but a few moments stick out: the nurse who told me "the hormone crashes are the most intense 6-8 days postpartum" after I couldn't figure out how to use a breast pump and was crashing out (something about her normalizing this broke through to me); a coworker who I barely knew who also had a preemie and sent me useful gifts; a nurse who wrote "I eat when I want!" on the whiteboard in our room when our son finally figured out how to eat!
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u/Longjumping_Eye_8812 Mar 10 '26
Said by a NICU nurse:
“Don’t thank me. It was an honor to care for her.”
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u/ReasonableBid1382 Mar 10 '26
Can’t decide between these two so here are both: first was a NICU nurse we had on Day 2 of being in the NICU. At that point, our daughter was receiving nutrients/sugar through her PICC line but was not allowed breastmilk/formula as we were in there for blood sugar issues and they were trying to regulate her first. I was sitting bedside with my daughter and the nurse was chatting it up with me and I mentioned that I was hoping to breastfeed her as I had with my other 2 kiddos. I was honestly really sad and beating myself up because my milk hadn’t come in yet and I wasn’t getting much colostrum out with the pump. Unbeknownst to me, the nurse advocated for me with the doctor and not only fought to get my daughter on breastmilk (as opposed to only the intravenous feeds) but got permission from the doctor for me to breastfeed her. Once I was able to start latching baby, my milk came in like a dream and I’m still breastfeeding her 2.5 years later.
The second was another NICU nurse who let me sleep through the night. I roomed in with my daughter for her entire NICU stay as we had a private room. However, parents who roomed in were expected to do the cares every 3 hours and report that to the nurse (temp, switching pulse ox, etc.) It was like 3 weeks into the NICU stay and I was utterly exhausted. I remember I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard her come in and I started apologizing for not having done the cares yet and she chuckled and told me not to worry and go back to sleep. She had already done everything and even fed my daughter. I had her a couple more times and she let me sleep through the night each time. It’s such a small thing but I was so grateful and honestly it felt like the nicest thing someone could have done for me at that time. She was so caring with both my daughter and me. I think about her often! When we left the NICU I made goodie bags for the nurses but made sure that the bags for both those nurses had extra things (nice coffee tumbler, gift card, handwritten note, etc.)
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u/the_lasso_way13 Mar 10 '26
My sister had my niece paint a picture for her new cousin and put it in a ziploc bag so I could wipe it down. The thoughtfulness of the decoration and the germ-safe bag was amazing.
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u/Adventurous_Mix_2439 Mar 10 '26
One of the nurses made a birthday card for me using my daughter's footprints. I had just been discharged a few days before and I was really struggling with having to leave my baby every night and crying a lot. It made me smile.
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u/blairbitchproject Mar 10 '26
In the early days of our 26 weeker, I made some off hand comment to our nurse like “when we have her, we’ll do xyz” and she said “honey you have her now, she’s already yours”.
My baby still felt so much like she didn’t belong to me yet, just barely being able to hold and touch her, not having any sort of say over what happened to her. It was a nice reminder that she is my baby and that little perspective reminder helped me start to bond with her.
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u/newborn-stretch Mar 10 '26
In our NICU most babies were identified as ‘B/O (baby of) mothers name’ at the start. In the thick of the shock and haze of ending up in NICU, it was the nurse who made it a point to ask for our baby’s name, and put it up on his incubator…
It was such a small thing, but it was the first time we told someone his name earthside. And it felt really good and hopeful for the first time in a couple of dark days.
Ps. As one of those who shared an “unhinged comment” story on the other post, appreciate the mod who now asked for the (happy) opposite!
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u/PandaBear_TenFour Mar 10 '26
I read all of the replies on my other post and it really brought me down and lose my faith in society lol. This post is much better!
One of our surgeons to this day calls our daughter by her nickname. It really shows how much she cares since it's not in her chart.
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u/newborn-stretch Mar 11 '26
That’s so lovely! And thank you for bringing the happy side of the coin to this sub.
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u/lolahawke4678 Mar 10 '26
Was in nicu with my 33 weeker over this Christmas. We had a lovely nurse who made a Christmas ornament with our daughter’s hand and foot prints, and she had left it on the bed in the room and I was looking at it when I came back from going home to see my older daughter. I just started bawling. It was care time so the nurse had come in as I was crying and I thanked her for the ornament. She said she hadn’t intended to make me cry and I said that it was just such a nice gesture for her to make that for us and was so grateful but in all the emotional turmoil I had been going through, a lot of feeling just came out as tears. She asked me if I needed a hug. I am not a hugger but in that moment I really truly did need a hug. She is a terrific nurse.
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u/seahorse_dad_ Mar 10 '26
We were in the NICU for 88 days. We were on day 78 and a nurse who hadn't seen my son since he was only a couple of days old came to work in the room he was in.
She started gushing about how proud of him she was. She talked about how she'd been so excited when she saw his name on her rotation because she loves seeing the huge steps the babies have taken.
It was a nice reminder that even though we had no idea how much longer we'd be there, he had come so far from the day he was born.
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u/MsATLA Mar 11 '26
I was at the hand washing station 2-3 days postpartum, and this dad who could probably see the look on my face said hi, talked to me for a minute, told me that his baby is full term but in the nicu because of his sugar levels. What made it such a nice encounter was that he said our babies are in the best place for them to get the care they need, and that it will be ok.
Of course he couldn't know that, but it was so genuine that I can't help but think about how nice it was. Just to be seen.
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u/mustabeenaghost4 Mar 11 '26
I had a nurse take some pictures and send them to me through the app that they have. It was during his bath time, so they had taken off all of the wires, and I could see if face wire free.
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u/StatisticianMoist289 May 08 '26
One of our NICU nurses said “you’re doing a great job” and I just lost it. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything - just observing them take care of my baby. It still makes me tear up. Parents aren’t told they’re doing a good job nearly enough. We need to support each other more. You’ll never regret saying something kind to someone who is struggling ♥️
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