Description
Clancy is a psychiatric social worker and the parent of a son born three months premature in 1993. Based on her own experiences and clinical expertise, her guide will help parents of preterm babies cope with their own pain and grief, the emotions and reactions of family members and friends, and the joys and fears of eventually bringing the baby home or dealing with an infant death. She also provides guidance on identifying and using available resources to help with this arduous process. In an appendix, the author includes the journal she kept during the four months her son was in a neonatal intensive care unit. No subject index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Based on her own harrowing experiences and her expertise as a psychiatric social worker, Jo Clancy addresses the parents of preterm babies, discussing the heartbreak and stress involved, the impact on the whole family of the death of the dream of a healthy full-term baby. She talks about how to survive leaving your baby behind after you've given birth, how to survive the long weeks while the baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She describes the experience of the mother's pain, the father's grief, the pain of the older children and the grandparents; how to cope with others' reactions to the birth, and the unbearable anguish when the baby dies. She describes the mixture of high delight and high anxiety when at last the baby comes home from the neonatal unit.A central motif of this hands-on survival guide is that parents must not be shy about seeking help, in fact they can't survive without it - whether from family, friends, coworkers, Social Security or the local school system. A useful reading list and resource guide will help new parents of preemies find what they need to survive.The book ends with the very moving diary Jo Clancy kept, addressed to her son Vincent, while he hovered for weeks between life and death in the infant intensive care unit. The whole emotional roller-coaster ride of joy at small improvements, and terror at the innumerable crises that make up the experience of parenting a preterm baby is there.
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