For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last - NYTimes.com Source: www.nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/health/25trau.html?_r=1

This article is good (even tho it focuses on premeies alot). Many heart parents believe they had something resembling PTSD. We even talked to the hospital about offering couseling- i had flashbacks & still do. Not just in the NICU but in the afte...r surgery recovery ICU, and even on the recovery floor when they still have to constantly take blood, tests, etc. This article is like a look into 'our' world- those of you who have never had a child in the hospital should read!

“The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness,” Ms. Roscoe said. “You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”

The second trauma is seeing their own infant having
traumatic medical procedures and life-threatening events, and also witnessing other infants going through similar experiences,” said the author of the Stanford study, Dr. Richard J. Shaw, an associate professor of child psychiatry at Stanford and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

“And third, they often are given serial bad news,” he continued. “The bad news keeps coming. It’s different from a car accident or an assault or rape, where you get a single trauma and it’s over and you have to deal with it. [ With a preemie], every time you see your baby the experience comes up again.”