Vicki Cockerill - NICU MUM Blog

Sleeping soundly. I woke up suddenly yesturday morning, drenched in sweat. My stomach knotted, fear rising in me and I began to panic. This feeling was all to familiar. I knew it instantly. My heart pumped so hard it hurt my chest. I looked around and realised where I was. That it was a dream. But what I dreamt was something that I had lived through. We watched a show on TV recently that said dreams and nightmares were a way of showing and processing trauamtic events, maybe this is what caused it. I wish the dream could have been something so unrealistic, so out of the world it was just that, a dream but this wasn't. It was just another reminder of what we had been through. Sometimes as I write so much about 'our story', talk about it, write extensively on the subject, campaign and it might come across  I am okay with it. That I have processed it. But, frankly it still terrifies me, haunts me. In my dream I was in hospital on the maternity ward, I looked d...

Helping out at The Big NICU Family Photo F our years ago, I was sitting alone in a hospital side room after just giving birth. My baby was down the hall after being admitted to NICU and the echoes of the distant baby's on the ward were deafening. I was frightened, had no idea what was happening and was all alone. Lonely Alone with the fear my baby might die, alone that I knew no one who had gone through this. Alone with the fact I didn't know what the hell was happening. I had no one I could text, call just to ask what do I do? How should I feel? Should I be this angry? This resentful and bitter anger bubbled beneath the surface because I felt I was being robbed of my start to motherhood. I shut down, didn't want anyone to visit. If they did I shut myself away in my room and sent then down to NICU with my partner. I couldn't face the questions, the pity. Then during our time no one professional came to see if we were okay. A few leaflets here and there, a quic...