Preemies and Family
A little background since I dont post on here often...
DS was born at 27 weeks, had two surgeries, spend 11 weeks in the NICU, and spent 5 months on oxygen. We've been through so much and are thankful every day for our little miracle baby. He's now 10 months old, adjusted age 7 months.
He has never been sick because I kept him home with me until he was off oxygen and about 6 months old. It was too difficult to travel with the oxygen tanks, monitors, etc, since my family lives 1.5 hours away. Everyone understood.
Now every time we visit my family DS gets sick, requires antibiotics, chest xrays, and since his ears never drained the fluid we might be getting tubes. The team of doctors do not take chances with his history so while he's never been gravely ill its always an ordeal whenever we bring him in because of an infection.
I receive ridicule from my older siblings about not wanting to bring him home anymore. While everyone is welcome to visit our home, I do not like traveling and exposing him to all the family members, and my siblings friends and children that always end up at my parents house. My baby ends up being sick and my siblings think I'm crazy for making a connection between being there and getting sick after. We are a medical/scientific family and you would think they would understand why I'm hesitant to bring him there. When my doctor says words like "retraction" and "respiratory distress" we all know what that means, and my doctor says to stop bringing him around lots of people till he's at least a year old.
I just feel that no one understands that when you have a preemie and you've heard every day in the NICU what could happen, then spend the next few months seeing a team of 12 different specialists all telling you what can happen now, its really scary. I do not want to be selfish and take him all over when I know it will end up hurting him. I feel totally fulfilled as a parent staying home, and working with the OT teaching him how to reach his milestones. No one has heard what I've heard about his conditions and yet I feel totally judged by others by doing what I feel is best. And the worst part is that the judgment is from my own family.
Thank you for letting this preemie mommy vent!
Re: Preemies and Family
This is so well put. Stay strong and come here for support. I'm sorry they don't get it.
Ditto the above. It's so hard, especially with family. We were just talking about this the other day, that if it was a friend or neighbor we would have no problem saying NO and keeping them out of our house/us out of theirs. But with family it's so hard, especially if they don't see you that often.
The health of your son is the most important now. If they insist, maybe you could bring an excersaucer and purell with you and set limits that no one can touch without purelling and that way he's in a clean environment since its your toy and you can lysol it before and after?
Same thing happened with my DD with my DH family. They smoke and we CANNOT have her in their home and they were mad at us b/c they thought we didn't want them to see her. We told them numerous times to come to our house to see her and leave a shirt here and we will wash it and leave it here for you. Well that never happened but they do understand the severity of the RSV and that it could be deadly. Ugh SO frustrating that they don't get it! It makes your life so much harder when it's supposed to be the best days of your life...