Mama I'm Coming Home - 10 Tips for How to Leave the NICU

/

The long awaited day is upon you and you are preparing to FINALLY take your baby home from the hospital and you realize you have no idea what to do next? Here are my top 10 tips for how to exit the NICU!

  1. Take everything that is not nailed down

    • Seriously EVERYTHING. Everything at your child’s bedside will be discarded when you leave, so load yourself up – You WILL need it all. Take the diapers, wipes, leftover formula, butt creams, syringes, cotton swabs, bedside buckets, and in some hospitals even the pillows. Take it all and just think you are doing the environment a favor by cutting down on waste too!

  2. Deep clean

    • Get your house spick and span. This will be so important because once that baby is home you are not going to have the time nor are you going to want to clean. You have just spent weeks, months, years with your child in the hospital. Sit your butts on the couch and cuddle up with your baby.

  3. Meal prep

    • Samesies. Get all of the essentials that you need to keep your family fed for at least a month. This will save you from having to run to the grocery store or cook. Also make sure you have a lot of snacks on hand, this is especially important for the breast feeding mamas.

  4. Stock up on baby essentials

    • It goes without saying that you cannot have enough diapers and wipes (even with all that stuff your gonna snag from the bedside!) so get all of them and make sure to get the next one or two sizes up to have on hand. You would be surprised at how fast they grow! Don’t limit yourself to just these items though. Make sure you have enough baby soap and lotion along with bibs, pacifiers, burp cloths and feeding needs. Especially if you have a formula fed baby, load up on formula and distilled water.

  5. Stock up on household essentials

    • Toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, body soap, hand sanitizer, lotion and ALL of the laundry soap should be locked and loaded.

  6. Create an Amazon Subscription list

    • This may not be your cup of tea but it is a lifesaver for us. Every month we have a month’s supply of formula for both boys, toilet paper, paper towels, bath soap and conditioner for me shipped automatically to us from Amazon. This is so helpful because I never have to think about it, it just magically shows up AND you get to save anywhere from 5-15% when you have the automatic subscription. You can always pause the entire subscription or just 1 or more items if you end up having an overstock.

  7. Have a date night

    • Get out of the house and have a date with your partner or have a girls night. You will thank yourself for this in a few weeks when you are up at 3AM feeding a baby or when you catch yourself in the mirror and wonder when the last time you washed your hair and put on make-up was.

  8. Wash all the baby clothes, sheets and blankets

    • Get all of your baby stuff washed and put away. Make sure you wash their current size along with at least one size up.

  9. Get any prescriptions picked up and ready to go

    • Have your doctors get all of your prescriptions sent to your pharmacy so that you can have them all at home and ready to go when the baby comes.

  10. Prepare yourself

    • Ask all of the questions you need answers to, get phone numbers for emergencies or 24 hour help lines and prepare yourself for not having specially trained medical miracle workers at your beck and call. When Josh and I got home with Rory for the first time we both looked at each other and said “uhhhh, what now?” We felt like we had no idea what to do or when to do it without those lovely people telling us. I even found myself asking Josh for permission to hold the baby (old habits die hard friends). Leaving the NICU means leaving your security blanket behind. You may hate going to that hospital every day after a while but when you get home you will miss it. You will miss the people, you will miss the security and you will miss your routine. Once you get home you have to start over, you have to make a new routine, you have to learn how to trust yourself and you have to do it all on your own now. However, there is no feeling greater than waking up on that first morning knowing that you are all home, safe and sound and under one roof.

No matter if you do all of these things, none of them or 100 more you will never be entirely ready for bringing your baby home from the NICU. All we can do as parents is our very best and if you can lay your head down on that pillow each and every night knowing you were the best mama or dada you could be then you win. So give yourself a pat on the back and know that this phase of life, just like the NICU phase, too shall pass.