03/20/2026
A “medical mom” is a mom who has a child with one or more medical complexities. (Dads too 😉)
But that definition barely scratches the surface.
A medical mom is the one who didn’t choose this life, but was chosen for it.
She becomes medically trained out of necessity, not by degree, but by sleepless nights, emergency rooms, and the quiet panic of watching monitors instead of cartoons.
She knows her child’s diagnoses, symptoms, medications, and history better than anyone in the room, because she has lived every second of it.
She didn’t just “learn”, she had to.
She researched between hospital stays, asked questions when she was scared to hear the answers, and memorized everything because forgetting is not an option when it’s your child’s life on the line.
A medical mom of an immune-compromised child lives in a constant state of invisible fear.
A simple cold isn’t simple.
A fever isn’t “just a fever.”
A cough can mean hospitalization.
A virus that others shake off in days can become something life-threatening.
She watches the world move freely while she calculates risks.
Birthday parties, grocery stores, family gatherings nothing is ever just “normal.”
Everything is filtered through the question: Is this safe for my child?
She carries the weight of protecting a body that cannot fully protect itself.
She sanitizes, isolates, cancels plans, and explains over and over again why “it’s different for us.”
She sees the looks, hears the comments, but still chooses caution every single time.
Because she knows what’s at stake.
She knows what it feels like to hand her child over to doctors and pray they come back to her.
To watch them be wheeled into surgery, heart in her throat, trying to be strong while silently breaking.
And no matter how many times it happens… it never gets easier.
She knows the sound of machines
what’s normal, what’s not.
She can read labs, track vitals, and sense something is wrong before anyone else sees it.
She knows the inside of an ambulance.
The hum of hospital rooms at night.
The exhaustion of sleeping in a chair while listening for every breath.
She likely has a bag packed at all times because “just in case” isn’t a thought, it’s a lifestyle.
She knows medication schedules by heart.
She administers treatments at home that most people couldn’t imagine doing outside of a hospital,
the kind of care that even trained nurses aren’t allowed to perform unless they’re specially certified…
yet she does it daily, because her child needs her to.
She is on a first-name basis with pharmacists, nurses, specialists.
She coordinates an entire medical team like it’s second nature.
And somehow she carries all of this while still showing up to a full-time job.
Still answering emails.
Still meeting deadlines.
Still functioning in a world that has no idea what she just walked through before she clocked in.
And when she comes home… she doesn’t get to rest.
Because she’s also raising a “glass child”
a child whose world is shaped around hospital stays, waiting rooms, and the needs of their sibling.
A child who loves deeply, but feels the absence, the shifts, the moments where mom has to be somewhere else.
So she splits herself in impossible ways,
trying to be everything for both of them, while silently carrying the guilt of never feeling like enough for either.
She is organized because she has to be.
Strong because she has no other option.
Exhausted in a way sleep will never fix.
She carries the mental load, the emotional weight, and the constant vigilance of keeping her child safe while still trying to be a mom in all the other ways, too.
She advocates fiercely.
She questions, pushes, fights because no one will ever fight harder than a mother who knows her child’s life depends on it.
She smiles and says “I’m okay” because explaining the reality would take too long… and hurt too much.
She doesn’t ask for help often not because she doesn’t need it, but because she’s learned how to survive without it.
She has seen the longest nights and the shortest seconds the kind where time either stands still or moves too fast.
She knows a kind of heartbreak that comes from watching your child suffer… and not being able to take it away.
But she also knows a kind of love that is deeper, fiercer, and more consuming than words can hold.
A medical mom would never choose this life…
but she would choose her child every single time.
She is strong.
She is resilient.
She is stretched beyond what most people will ever understand.
And still she shows up.
She loves harder.
She keeps going.
Because her love knows no limits.
The author is me, Nakita Christensen, full time working mom, medical mom, mother to three boys, and wife to Logan Christensen.
Forever advocating for KAT6 Foundation in honor of my son Gage aka Sq**rt.
