I feel as if there isn’t enough talk about term/over term babies that end up in the nicu. My girl was born at 41 weeks. I had a perfect pregnancy, not a single issue. But she had severe meconium and was born not breathing. They were able to breathe for her while in the room but after 5 minutes she still wasn’t breathing in her own so they rushed her to the nicu. I didn’t get to see her until about 5 hours later. They told me I had a weak placenta and cord. She was only 5 lb 9 oz at 41 weeks. She was on oxygen and glucose. The next day they were able to take her off the glucose and the next off oxygen. She was off oxygen for 48 hours and the morning we were going to take her home, her oxygen levels dropped and they found a heart murmur. They did an echocardiogram, found a couple minor things but nothing major. They sent her home the next day on oxygen. She’s now 2 weeks old, still on oxygen. Her pediatrician doesn’t want to take her off oxygen until after she sees a cardiologist just to be safe. She can’t see one until next week. Trying to take care of her with the oxygen is SO hard. We’re basically confined to our bedroom. We have to take turns with everything because it’s not like we can take her down to the kitchen with us while we eat.

No one talks about non preemies ending up in the nicu. It’s a different type of hard. Nothing went wrong and then suddenly everything did. There was no reason to think anything was wrong. We need to talk about it more.