I have been meaning to make this video for some time now. I am so happy that the wonderful people at ICU Baby asked me to put this together. So here are my TOP 5 TIPS FOR NICU DADS! I hope they help. The post Top 5 Tips For NICU Dads appeared first on The NICU Dad ..read more

A few months back I was asked by Bryana Salazar to be a part of a study she was doing. I jumped at the chance when I found out the study was exploring the needs of NICU fathers and their experiences after discharge. 32 NICU fathers participated in this study to help us learn more about the NICU experience and the transition home. Please take a look at her study here: https://spark.adobe.com/page/wR523tLe542qn/#theme-5 Here is what she found. Theme 1: Dads and Healthcare Providers Interacting with healthcare providers while your child is in the NICU and beyond can be intimidating. Theme 2: Adj ..read more

A NICU stay is definitely a life changing experience. Our 67 day NICU stay definitely changed my life. Seven years later and I’m still feeling the effects in some degree or another. Seven years ago my daughter was born at 27 weeks. Her birthday has always been such a special day. Maybe it is everything that is going on in our world today, but this year was different. This year I found myself looking at the clock and reliving the entire day all over again. It was one of the most anxious and emotional days I’ve had in a while. It started with me looking at the clock at 8 a.m. and thinking, this ..read more

I want to talk about something that is never discussed or even mentioned, but is one of the most important definitive moments in a NICU dad’s journey. It is the moment right before a NICU dad walks into the operating room. It is the moment that time stands still. The moment For some NICU dads everything begins with a phone call, a phone call that brings your world crashing down. The phone call is to tell you that something is not right and the baby is coming or has to be delivered immediately. The next moment is you driving like a maniac to the hospital, all the while praying, making promises ..read more

A while back I was asked to host a NICU Dads Group at our local Children’s Hospital’s NICU. I thought it was a great idea and immediately jumped online to start researching some topics or just get some information that I could share with some fellow NICU Dads. I looked and looked, and found nothing. Well, maybe nothing is a slight exaggeration. All I found was an article here and there in sites that were for NICU moms. There was nothing out there for NICU Dads. Then I came across Rad White and The NICU Beard Club. Rad had also written a book for NICU Dads, Enter The NICU. I was very excit ..read more

 On June 10, 2013 my wife and I both went to work on what seemed like a normal Monday morning. She was 27 weeks pregnant. It was the first day of summer vacation for our oldest daughter, who had just turned 9 the week before. Everything was fine, until my wife called around 9 a.m., hysterical. Her water broke, and an ambulance was on its way to take her to the hospital. I was almost 45 minutes away, but made it to the hospital in about 15 minutes. Our world was turned upside down. We were informed that the baby was breach and we would have to have an emergency C-section. At 12 noon our daught ..read more

There is a special bond between neonatal nurses and families with babies in the NICU. If I were to explain this to new NICU dads I would start by telling them about our experience and sharing how NICU nurses become more than just caretakers of your baby. They were one of our main support groups during our NICU stay. There were so many intimate moments that were shared with our NICU nurses, some good and some bad. From the very first day that I walked into the NICU and saw our tiny baby in her iscolet, with all those tubes, I cried. It was one of our NICU nurses who rubbed my back and told me ..read more

I recently came across a post on social media, where a mother shared her plan about returning to work after coming home from the NICU and asked for advice on what other NICU parents did. The thread that followed completely blew my mind! I couldn’t believe how many parents responded and how similar their stories were to ours. Having a baby in the NICU is life changing, and more often, bringing a baby home from the NICU is also life changing. Some parents bring home babies from the NICU who still require a lot of care. They have to make some serious decisions about who is going to care for the b ..read more

I never really gave it much thought, and it makes me feel horrible to say, but I never really took into consideration what our parents went through when we were in the NICU. What must they have been feeling? How were they coping with everything that was going on? What did they think was happening or going to happen? It took me five years to finally think about my parents, our daughter’s grandparents, and what they went through during our NICU stay. It was not just us who were affected by our NICU experience, grandparents go through it as well. They go through separate NICU experiences both wit ..read more