HOW ARE WE DIFFERENT?
At Peekaboo ICU we take the focus off of the medical aspects of the NICU and put our efforts into empowerment and education for families, a celebration of the baby, their growth and development, and parenting in the neonatal intensive care.
All too often the medical aspects of the journey over shine some of the developmental aspects. As healthcare professionals, we get caught up in numbers, statistics, volumes, medications, conditions, and procedures, often overlooking some of the emotional and developmental aspects that are just as important.
Especially to the parents.
Parents are often overwhelmed and full of fear of the unknown. They are thrown into NICU and expected to not only live in this medical world but parent there too. Parenting a baby isn’t supposed to be this way. As parents, we are supposed to rejoice and celebrate our babies. It is supposed to be a happy time, a major chapter in our book of life, but when prematurity and the NICU are involved, all of this changes.
With this change comes a change in how parents view their children, how they parent their kids, and how they live day to day. What follows? These parents become medical caretakers of their babies, sometimes living in fear and wondering when the next shoe is going to drop.
Why?
Because the NICU has molded them this way. The normal parenting aspects have been lost or buried by the mounds of medical information they have had to live, eat, and breathe each and every day.
Peekaboo ICU hopes to change this. Empowering parents with information that will not only help them understand their preemie but also help them to learn what they can do so their baby will thrive beyond the NICU days. We take the focus off of some of the more medical aspects and put the focus back on the baby and the parent’s relationship with their baby. Helping parents be parents and giving them an opportunity to celebrate their baby while understanding their needs as they grow and develop in the NICU.
We celebrate things like first diaper changes, first bath, and kangaroo care. We found that refocusing on these important parenting aspects not only relieves some of the fear, but it normalizes some of the experience and in turn helps parents cope better, have less anxiety, less fear, and feel more confident.
What do you think parents want to remember the most about their NICU experience? The numbers, volumes, and statistics they have been groomed to focus on? Or the special moments they create as they learn to understand, connect with, and celebrate their baby?
We need to erase the medical footprints we leave in the minds of parents and replace them with special memories that leave lasting imprints on their hearts.