Loving Myself Again (eBook)

Table Of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

How To Use This Book

A is for Attention

B is for Bonding

C is for Creativity

D is for Downtime

E is for Empathy

F is for Friends

G is for Gratitude...

...Acknowledgements

About The Author

Introduction

Whether your child was in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) or Special Care Nursery (SCN) for one day, one year or somewhere in between, it is usually not where you expected to be. Wearing a hospital gown (and maybe even gloves) to reach through two small windows of a plexiglass wall into the world of your newborn child can bring so many questions and emotions.

Taking care of yourself during this time is a journey of struggles and triumphs-a journey that continuously needs to be refocused and approached from new perspectives.

My son, Skye, arrived nine weeks early and spent two months in the NICU. When I was first home with Skye, I was lost. I hadn't connected my overwhelming emotions with the traumas we had gone through. Even when I finally did recognize that I was experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms, I did not want to go to counselling. Let's face it: being a trauma counsellor myself, I knew that working through emotions from trauma is a lot of work. I had a brand-new baby home from the hospital with a compromised immune system, so I did not want to go out-all I wanted to do was sleep. But I finally did pick myself up and start going to a counsellor, which was a saving grace. I realized how much of myself I had forgotten. Skye needed so much of me and because I wanted to protect him, I had stopped thinking about myself. The depletion showed.