After your baby’s arrival, some family members and friends will rally to support you. They will know how to tune in to your needs and provide immense comfort. You will value having these people in your life.
Unfortunately, others may be flooded with fear or feel too uncomfortable to face you. Or they may repeatedly say the wrong things. While most people mean well, not everyone will know how to support you. To guide family and friends, try the following:
- Tell those close to you what you need. Assistance in grocery shopping, cleaning your home or taking care of your other children can be enormously helpful to you and easy for those who want to help. People who want to be a support often don’t know how unless you tell them.
- Remember that family and friends take their cues from you. If you hide your feelings of distress, they may assume you are doing just fine, until you let them know differently.
- Assume that insensitive remarks are not meant to hurt you. Gently let people know when a comment stings. Also, let them know how much you appreciate it when they do or say something helpful.
- Be open and honest about your emotions and your baby’s condition. Make it clear you don’t expect them to fix the situation, but that you just want a sympathetic ear.
- Don’t worry about protecting others’ feelings. They will work through their own feelings, just as you are trying to work through yours.
- Consider leaving an outgoing message on your answering machine with the information you choose to share. That way you can decide with whom you’d like to talk and still supply information to others.
- Gently, but firmly, tell those who continue to make you feel worse or make unfair demands on you that this is a difficult time and that you will contact them when you are feeling better.
If you are not getting enough support from those close to you, find other sources of support among extended family and friends, other NICU parents or professional counselors. Rely on people you can count on.
