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Takeaways

• Fear, joy, guilt, anger, loneliness, and grief are the six emotions Sam sees over and over again in NICU parents, sometimes all in the same day.
• Guilt tells NICU parents it's their fault. Sam explains why that almost never holds up, and why grace matters more than blame.
• Grief in the NICU isn't only about loss of life. It can mean grieving the birth plan, the delivery, or the homecoming day that didn't happen the way you pictured it.

Summary of the episode

In episode two of Life in the NICU: UNFILTERED, host Sam Huber walks through the six emotions that show up most for parents with a baby in the NICU: fear, joy, guilt, anger, loneliness, and grief. She speaks both as a NICU nurse and as a mother who lived through her own NICU journey after losing one of her twin daughters and delivering her surviving daughter ten weeks premature.

Sam starts with fear, the emotion she felt first when a NICU provider walked into her hospital room before her C-section. She unpacks the difference between fear of the unknown and fear of the unfamiliar, and shares the advice she now gives parents as a nurse: keep asking questions until something actually makes sense, even if that means asking more than one provider.

From there she moves into joy, describing the small, specific moments that carry NICU parents through hard days: skin to skin contact, hat check time, a baby's first bottle, tiny fingers wrapping around a parent's hand. She then turns to the harder emotions. Guilt, especially the version that shows up when parents blame themselves for something outside their control. Anger, including her own anger at her body for what she felt was a series of betrayals. Loneliness, the specific kind that comes from walking past every other room to get straight to your own baby's isolette. And finally grief, which she reframes as something bigger than death alone, something that can include grieving a birth plan, a delivery method, or a homecoming that didn't happen on schedule.

Sam closes the episode with a direct message to anyone listening who is struggling: reaching out for help is a sign of strength, not weakness, and no one has to carry these feelings alone.

Resources: Visit NICU Necessities for more NICU tips and resources

This podcast is for education and support and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always talk with your baby’s care team about your family’s needs.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Takeaways

• Samantha shares how her first pregnancy ended in an early miscarriage, and how that grief shaped every pregnancy that followed.
• At 25 weeks pregnant with twins, Samantha lost one daughter, Cadence, while continuing to carry her surviving twin, Lexi, all the way to delivery.
• After a four week NICU stay and years of healing, Samantha went back to school to become a NICU nurse so other parents never feel alone.

Summary of the episode

Welcome to episode one of Life in the NICU Unfiltered. Host Samantha Huber opens the show with the story that started it all, her own journey through miscarriage, a high-risk twin pregnancy, the loss of one daughter, and a NICU stay with the other. This episode is the foundation for everything the podcast stands for.

Samantha walks through her first pregnancy, which ended in an early miscarriage at 12 weeks, and the isolation she felt navigating that loss without anyone in her life who had gone through the same thing. Three months later, she became pregnant again, this time with twins. What started as double the excitement turned into a high-risk pregnancy when a 20-week ultrasound revealed one twin was growing at half the rate of the other. Complete bed rest, weekly home health visits, and constant monitoring became her new normal.

At 25 weeks, Samantha learned her daughter Cadence had passed while her twin sister, Lexi, continued to grow. She carried both the grief and the pregnancy at once, delivered by emergency C-section, and spent the following weeks splitting her time between holding her surviving daughter in the NICU and planning a funeral for the daughter she lost.

The episode closes with Lexi's NICU discharge, the fear and confidence that came with bringing a preemie home, and Samantha's decision years later to become a NICU nurse so she could sit with other parents in the moments she once faced alone.

Resources: Visit NICU Necessities for more NICU tips and resources

This podcast is for education and support and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always talk with your baby’s care team about your family’s needs.