27/12/2025
PTSD post NICU
She didn’t fall apart when it was happening.
That part surprises people.
In the NICU, she learned how to function. How to listen without reacting. How to read faces before words. How to love a baby while holding her breath.
Home was supposed to be the exhale.
Instead, her body stayed alert.
Not scared. Ready.
She noticed it in small ways. The way quiet felt unfinished. The way her eyes opened before her baby made a sound. The way relief never lasted long enough to settle.
She didn’t replay the worst moments. She replayed the in-between ones. The waiting. The pauses that meant something could tip either way. Her nervous system remembered those better than anything.
People assumed she was past it now. But her body hadn’t caught up to the timeline.
She loved her baby with a watchfulness she couldn’t turn off. Joy came, but it stayed close, like something that still needed guarding. Not because she didn’t trust her baby. Because she learned how quickly trust could be interrupted.
No one told her trauma can look like competence. Like devotion. Like a parent who never stops checking.
It took time to understand this wasn’t anxiety or failure or ingratitude. It was memory. Stored in muscle and breath.
Healing didn’t arrive quietly or all at once. Some days it didn’t arrive at all.
She isn’t healed.
She’s learning.
Learning when to ask for help.
Learning that strength doesn’t mean carrying this alone.
Learning that her body needs time to catch up to what her heart already knows.
The NICU taught her how to endure.
Healing asks something different.
It asks for patience.
For support.
For space to rest without explaining why.
This isn’t a finished story.
It’s a process.
And needing time, and help, doesn’t mean she’s behind. It means she survived something that changed her and she’s still here, learning how to live after it.
