Today we’re joined by influencer Casey Major-Bunce who shares parenting hacks on Instagram over at @majorbuncehome. Casey shares her ICU experience after having all four of her children go through this.
1. Hello and welcome! Thank you so much for sharing around this such important topic. Please do tell us, if you are comfortable doing so, about your ICU experience-how did your children end up in the ICU? was it different circumstances with each child?
Ayron who was my first born contracted meningitis from strep B, 24-hours after I gave birth to him. Considering this was my first experience as a Mum, I felt like I had handled it well, and because he received early antibiotics I was told he would be fine. Therefore, even though it was devastating not being with your child in his first hours, to be told he should be fine was very reassuring.
With my second child, Kaiser, it was completely different. He had HIE (Hypoxia Ischemic Encephalopathy), which is due to not having enough blood flow and oxygen around the brain shortly before delivery. This was down to complete medical neglect for 22 hours, so his NICU experience was in significant contrast to the experience with Ayron. I felt so lost and alone. I was angry a lot during the time he spent in the NICU. He was cooled, which is when they cool the body down to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. This slows the brain’s metabolism and can prevent further damage. It puts them in a kind of coma and he was also on morphine. He didn’t have any feeds just fluid for the first three days of life. He had an MRI on day 6 that showed multiple parts of his brain had been damaged due to his birth.
The hospital staff were fabulous after he was born. However, they did try to remove me from the hospital a couple of days after he was born and I refused to leave, and I also refused to leave the private room that they had given me for the first few days because I wouldn’t leave him like I had left my first son. My husband pretty much looked after our oldest son and would come up once in the day and then spend the evening with us.
The girls were premature, born at 32 weeks. This experience was different to both Ayron and Kaiser, as I was prepared for their admission into the ICU because they were identical twins, and I had a heart-shaped uterus. The only thing we didn’t plan for was that I had to have a C-section under general aesthetic due to the spinal block not working properly, and I never got to see the girls until over 24 hours later after they were born because I had lost so much blood and needed iron transfusions.
2. How did you find navigating the ICU with a small child? How did it impact you emotionally?
As mentioned above, I didn’t leave my second son alone in the hospital at any time he was there. I obviously missed my eldest son, however, I needed to be with Kaiser during this time as I kind of felt what had happened to him had happened to me as we both nearly lost our lives. With the girls, we tried to see them twice a day, although the hospital was 45 minutes from where we lived. We would have to try to time it around family looking after the boys. Sometimes the staff did make me feel guilty because they used to ask will not to be back for something called kangaroo cuddles, which is skin-to-skin contact with premature children. We used to try to do it twice a day, however, some parents would come in every two to three hours to feed their children, which we just couldn’t. The guilt really did eat us up inside.
3. What advice would you give other parents in the same boat?
Casey with her twin girls.
Keep some sort of record of what your child is doing day-to-day because it is really hard at the time, and remember how far you’ve come from just a few days ago. It is good to write things down in a notebook about what your child is doing now and maybe what things you hope for that they will be doing, and you can look back on that and think oh wow they are doing that now they are getting there.
If you can take short breaks away from the hospital even if you go for a coffee with your partner or friends just so you feel like you can breathe and have some normalization Try to get involved as much as you can even if you are just changing your baby’s nappies or giving a feed with the feeding tube. Just make sure you get involved sometimes as it can feel that that baby isn’t yours, and everyone is always watching you. But this isn’t the case that baby is yours it just needs a little bit of help.
Don’t ever be afraid to ask questions. At the end of the day, you’re not medically trained, and it can be very scary when three people are around your children or chatting about them and you don’t understand what they are talking about.
Ask for a debrief in non-medical terms and no question is silly. If you are pumping leave a muslin cloth or even a baby grower in with your baby for a few hours and take that out and whilst you pump smell the clothing. I know it sounds crazy, but it really does help to bring your milk in. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself if you’re getting a good supply or not. You don’t need to breastfeed. Mums health is best.
4. How did you juggle this with parenting your other children too?
We had help and sometimes one of us would look after the children whilst the other visited the babies, and as I said we would get up early in the morning to go and see the girls, then we would come home and have a day with the boys and then go back in the evening whilst the boys slept. We just wanted to try to keep up as much normality as possible for the kids.
5. Is there anything you feel needs to change to help/support families who find themselves in this situation?
I think it would be lovely if they had nice reclining chairs or maybe a camp bed of some sort so the Mum or the Dad could actually stay with the baby overnight. I used to find myself wandering around the corridors at 2:00 AM just so I could go and see my babies.