Writing for Babies — Part 1
A Journaling Workshop for NICU Parents
As writers, most of us understand the therapeutic value of committing our thoughts and words to paper, or to electrons, for those of us who are no longer luddites. Journaling provides a way to order our thoughts, preserve the details, reframe perspectives, and express our feelings, spanning from gratitude to rage. It allows us to pause and focus on our inner awareness of the present moment and examine our experiences.
At one point in my life, journaling helped me to recover my life and my heart after a pregnancy loss that sucked me into a vortex of depression. Losing an infant in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy was painful and disorienting. After several rounds of psychotherapy, multiple antidepressants, a divorce, and a career change, I emerged on the other side having published two small essays on pregnancy loss in anthologies. I also landed in a new community, a virtually unseen sisterhood, a sorority of sorrow, for those of us whose babies did not come to term.
Amazing medical advances in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and the ability to extend the lives of infants born as young as 28 weeks of gestation, have brought new hope to parents. Infants born prematurely, before 37 weeks of gestation, are at risk for life-threatening complications including respiratory distress, low birth weight, inability to maintain body temperature, sepsis, cardiac distress and other complications.
Parents whose newborns end up in the NICU face daunting challenges balanced with hope. NICU admission can leave parents feeling overwhelmed, helpless, hopeless, and detached from their baby. They have all the feels: stress, sleep deprivation, edginess, depression, anxiety, anger, guilt. Many hospitals provide networks of emotional support and educational resources to help parents deal with the challenges of having a baby in NICU.
A work colleague, who was also a NICU parent, had seen my published essays and suggested we organize an informal journal writing workshop for NICU parents at a Minnesota teaching hospital.
The objective of the workshop was to offer participants additional tools for dealing with this stressful experience. They were offered time (albeit short intervals), a safe space, and permission to explore their thoughts and feelings about this life changing experience. About 20 parents, slightly fewer fathers than mothers, attended the 3-hour seminar.
After brief introductions, the group was supplied with college-ruled, wire-bound notebooks and a variety of pens, colored pencils, markers, and crayons.
The format of the class used a series of timed writings, 10–20 minutes each, with informal breaks for discussion between writing sessions. The blank page can be daunting, so a variety of strategies were provided for getting started including the use of lists, repetitive phrases, storytelling, questions, and directive prompts.
Parents were provided a worksheet of writing prompts and I read a list of potential topics before setting the timer to start each writing session. Participants were asked to pick one of the topics and just flat out write for the allotted time. Other than a suggestion that they date their journal entries, there were no rules for writing. They were encouraged to keep the pen moving on the page, forget about punctuation and spelling and write as though no one would ever read it. Participants were given time, space, tissues, and topics along with permission to write about whatever prompt resonated or triggered inspiration for them.
The first writing exercise asked parents to make a list, of items mundane or profound, perhaps one of the following:
o Things you brought to the hospital
o Things you are grateful for
o Sounds, smells, tastes, textures you experienced in the hospital
o Who showed up for you
o People you told about the delivery
o People you didn’t tell about the delivery
o Things you must write about
o Things you must not write about
The second timed writing suggested starting each sentence or paragraph with repetitive words or phrases, establishing a rhythm, not unlike a prose poem:
o The doctor said…
o The nurses told me…
o I must remember…
o If only…
o Why…
o My baby…
o My partner/spouse…
o I cannot forget…
o I am grateful for…
o I never told anyone…
The third exercise asked parents to tell a detailed story about:
o The pregnancy, delivery, NICU
o What changed when your baby was born
o The equipment that surrounds your baby
o The people who worked to keep your baby alive
o Waiting for your baby to come home
o Your marriage/partnership
o About your other children
o Anything else
The penultimate assignment used a question to begin a journal entry:
o What was the first holiday you celebrated with your baby?
o What have you let go of since your baby was born?
o Who showed up to support you?
o What did you grieve?
o What did you celebrate?
o Where was God?
o What does your partner/spouse need from you now?
o What do you need from your partner/spouse now?
The final timed exercise used a directive writing prompt that gave an assignment such as:
o Write a letter to a friend or relative about your delivery experience.
o Write a letter to a new NICU parent sharing whatever you believe they might need to know.
o Write a letter to your baby.
o Write about what sustained you during your child’s stay in the NICU.
o Write about your feelings.
o Write about what you have mastered.
o Write about your unfinished business.
o Write about the future.
At breaks between writing exercises we stretched, chatted, dried tears, and replenished fluids. At the end of the workshop, participants were given the opportunity to read aloud their journal entries for the other parents. Regrettably, we ran out of time before we ran out of readers.
The journals were theirs to keep and it was up to each of them if they wanted to share their writing or keep it private. They left with handouts of the writing prompts used for the timed writings, along with a list of books and websites on journaling, grieving, and healing.
In the companion essay “Writing for Babies — Part 2”, we’ll explore journaling through pregnancy loss.
