u/HelloVermont92

For 91 days, my baby was in your hands. I know that he would not be here today without the medical intervention he received, and for the fact that you kept him alive and helped him grow, I will always hold a sense of debt. But while you sustained his body, what you failed to do was show him or me was an ounce of basic human love and respect. A pack of wolves would have shown my baby more tenderness than he received in your care.

You wore the titles of caregivers, but too often, I arrived to find my son covered in his own filth on days I couldn’t be there. When I spoke up, the excuse was always a lack of time. Yet, from his bedside, I watched as there was always ample time for snacks and loud gossip. Your walls were plastered with signs reading "Quiet please, no loud sounds," yet you yelled across the room without a care. I will never forget holding my son for the very first time a fragile moment and having it shattered by a nurse shouting across the nursery to her friend about the great sex she had from the night before.

My concerns were treated as a nuisance rather than a tool. When my baby began to struggle and needed more CPAP support, the nurses didn't notice. When I pointed it out, you refused to listen. It took me 30 desperate minutes of searching the floor to find a random respiratory therapist who would finally take me seriously and get my son the help he needed.

When it came to day-to-day care, you hovered. I was never left alone with him for a single bath, feeding, or diaper change. Instead of guiding me, you watched me like a hawk, making me feel utterly inadequate and rushing to snatch him away the second I wasn’t as fast as you. Yet, your "efficiency" was entirely conditional. If my baby didn't wake up within five minutes for a scheduled feeding, nurses would simply skip him and move on to the next child. Because you didn't have the time to patiently feed him when he was sleepy(though you always had the time to police me doing it)I was forced to practically live in the NICU. I sacrificed every ounce of my own mental health, staying awake day and night to pump and feed him myself, desperate to get him away from you.

Your words were weapons. When a family emergency kept me away for one week, a nurse took it upon herself to start calling my son "her baby" and labeling herself "his NICU mom." It broke my heart. And when I was pouring everything I had into providing for him, a doctor chose to brutally tell me that breastfeeding was nothing more than a "hopeful fantasy."
The medical gaslighting from the physicians taught me to never trust a doctor again. After my son survived NEC, I was promised he would return to feeds in five days since he didn't require surgery. I arrived that fifth night to find him listless, asleep, and still hooked to an IV. When we finally forced a meeting with the head doctor, they admitted they had lied to me they said five days just to "placate" me, never intending to keep the promise.

Another doctor routinely gave my baby painful suppositories, leaving his skin raw and bleeding, despite him having absolutely no bowel issues. When pressed, the only answer was that it was "standard treatment for preterm babies," forcing me to file a formal complaint with Patient Advocacy just to make it stop. That same doctor knew for nearly two weeks that my son had three hernias and deliberately hid it from me. I only found out because a nurse practitioner finally ordered an emergency ultrasound. In those weeks, I learned to hate with a passion and intensity I never knew I was capable of possessing.

You did your job in keeping his heart beating. But you failed the human being inside that incubator, and you failed the mother standing beside it. He is home now, safe, and finally surrounded by real, unconditional love. But the scars of how we were treated in your unit are something I will carry for the rest of my life.