Christine Wulbecker | Navigating the NICU: A Journey Through Maternal Mental Health

In this episode of The Mama Making Podcast, Jessica sits down with Christine Wulbecker, a licensed clinical social worker, to discuss the intersection of the NICU experience and mental health. Christine shares her personal NICU journey and sheds light on the emotional challenges faced by families during a NICU stay.

They explore the importance of strong support systems, self-care strategies for parents, and the lasting impact of trauma on families. Christine emphasizes the need for mental health support, the power of processing difficult experiences, and why seeking help is essential for NICU parents navigating this journey.

This heartfelt conversation offers comfort, guidance, and validation for parents who have experienced or are currently facing the NICU journey.

You can connect with Christine:

• On Instagram at: @emiliecounseling
• On the web at: www.emiliecounseling.com
• More on Pregnancy & Postpartum Support Groups

This episode is sponsored by Collabs Creative - a digital marketing company supporting makers, creatives, and small business owners with all things digital and design. 

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Transcript

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (00:58)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Mama Making Podcast. If you're new here, I'm your host, Jessica. If you're not, then welcome back. Today, I'm very excited to have Christine Wohlbecker here with us today. Christine is a licensed clinical social worker and a parent natal mental health counselor. She's the founder of Emily Counseling, serving the Chicagoland area. Thank you for being here today. I'm so excited to have you.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (01:21)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (01:25)
So today we're gonna chat a little bit about the NICU experience and the intersection it has with mental health for families. But before that, I would love to know more about you, where you're from, what you do, whatever you're willing to share.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (01:43)
Yeah, so I started down the path of just all things maternal mental health. Probably, I guess growing up, my mom was a gynecologic oncologist. So I feel like I was just around a lot of maternal physical health stuff. And exactly, and got to see just the empowerment that comes from

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (02:01)
Yeah, you were born into it.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (02:09)
you know, having good support from a team when you're going through something related to your body, related to, the functioning of the aspects of your life that, yeah, that have to do with being female identified or that have to do with having a certain body, certain body parts. and so I decided to become a doula. and that was a really.

Great and also very difficult job, support and I was a birth doula and I still maintain my certification. It's a job where you get to be with people during a time that can be really vulnerable and also really empowering, really exciting, sometimes really scary. And I loved it. I loved being with people during those moments. My primary population was teenage parents, so folks 22 and younger.

who were pregnant and then birthing and immediately postpartum. And like I said, I loved it and it was also really, really tough. And so I just kind of knew that I wasn't going to be able to do the work for a long time if I didn't have the proper support. And that both of those experiences, as well as then studying for my master's in social work and working in a perinatal IOP program,

have kind of led me now to my private practice work where my favorite folks to serve are those who are in the perinatal period, pregnancy and postpartum, as well as birth workers. So doulas, midwives, OB folks, lactation folks. And I have offices in Logan Square and North Center. And I also do virtual visits and I'll do home visits sessions for folks in the Chicagoland area.

who are either on bed rest or you know newly postpartum and needing some support at at home, so I'm loving it and I also started some groups knowing that there's a real big need for just being in the room with other other folks who are in a similar life stage and My group is called intentional mamas. So it's really geared toward folks who are pretty sensitive and pretty

wanting to be intentional in their journey during pregnancy and postpartum.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (04:21)
Yeah, I feel like every area that you're in has been like a very highly needed, but very lesser seen, if that makes sense. mean, teen parents has to be the most vulnerable area of this in that the support is sometimes lacking and there's a developmental component that I'm sure you.

encountered and then just birth work in general is so vulnerable. I think that utilizing your experience doing all of that and then bringing it to obviously mental health for families postpartum, but then for birth workers is incredible. I think they're like the missed community in that. I mean, you go into birth work because you have a caring and probably really sensitive and tender heart, but in that.

I think a lot of people forget to take care of themselves in that area because they're serving others. There are a million other professions that are the same way, but I think it's a very unique space. So I think bringing mental health to birth workers is really incredible.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (05:25)
Yeah, yeah, it's not a niche that you see very often. and yet it's one that like, like I said, I knew I needed a lot of support when I was a doula, you know, actively practicing as a doula. And in my, you know, I feel really passionate about how folks come into this work with a lot of passion with a lot of energy, and then you start to really get drained.

as you're on call all the time, getting up in the middle of the night, having to say no to, either having to say no to a client who you really want to help or say no to someone in your personal life who you really also want to stick connected with. So all those decisions and then adding in the systems that we're in, which are not always conducive to birth justice, let's say, and also to the type of work that birth workers do.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (06:01)
Right.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (06:13)
And that itself is also very stressful. So you're not exactly always welcomed with open arms in the birth setting. And so yeah, there are a lot of levels to the stress that birth workers can face. I kind of came away often thinking like, I guess I'm just too sensitive or I just don't have what it takes when in reality, it can't always come back to an individual problem per se. Like those are also the

My sensitivity and my passion are what make me good at what I'm doing and make me really sensitive to family's needs. so, yeah, again, I'm really passionate and excited about supporting birth workers so that they can continue doing this good work without getting burned out, without having secondary trauma effects, without compassion fatigue, or at least with some support for dealing with those things.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (07:06)
Yeah, it's such needed and lesser seen work. So I definitely commend you for carving out that niche to help other people kind of navigate through. So tell me a little bit about your IOP experience. For those who don't know, IOP is Intensive Outpatient Program.

Christine Wulbecker, LCSW, PMH-C (07:25)
Yeah, so the IOP program that I worked at is unfortunately one of the only programs that are perinatal focused within the Chicagoland area. initially it was like one of the only in the country of the US.

So the IOP level of care is designed to meet the needs of those with more acute mental health symptoms than what weekly therapy and every few months psychiatry support can manage. So folks are noticing more symptoms and more challenges with their mental health than they can manage with that sort of more.

lower level of care, typical type of And you can imagine with the perinatal population, it's particular, there's some really unique challenges,

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (08:16)
let's get a little bit more into, the NICU experience. I feel like this is an area where few people have to enter it. but it is a very impactful and life -changing experience for most. so I'd love to talk with you more about it, your experience, working with

Christine Wulbecker (08:26)
Mm

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (08:37)
people who have had this experience, just anything and everything revolving on the NICU experience and how mental health is impacted by this stage or area of life for families.

Christine Wulbecker (08:50)
Mm hmm. Yeah, so we know that NICU experiences, I mean, I think the average person knows like being in the hospital is a tough experience. And we can all imagine that like having your precious baby who was just born be kept in the hospital would be a really tough experience. And so I guess I'll just share first that, you know, of course I knew that.

And so then when I had my own experience of the NICU, was a whole new facet of my knowledge and kind of what I now bring to the work. So my daughter was born November, 2020. So we all probably remember where we were during that time of lockdown and pandemic and was with COVID -19. So.

My pregnancy was pretty normal and I went past my due date. you know, she wasn't preterm. We knew that much. And we had a lovely labor at mostly at home and then got to the birth center at nine centimeters dilation. So it's kind of like, cool. Like this is all going swimmingly. And then, and I had to push for quite a long time.

But then she was born, my husband was right there, my doula was with me. So even in the midst of all the COVID restrictions, I felt like I was so glad. And then I ended up hemorrhaging. And so it went from this lovely cocoon experience to then suddenly a lot of panic and a lot of focus on me instead of the baby, which was bizarre to me having been in a lot of birthing rooms. I mean, yes, there's attention on the mom, like,

Nobody was even checking my daughter or anything. And my husband like literally walked out of the room holding her, just like walking around the birth center. Like, you know, something was really wrong when, when that was allowed. But anyway, so they made the call to transfer me to the nearest hospital. And thankfully Florence got to come with me in the ambulance. And, you know, once we got there, I was all right. And we, they just kept us for

I didn't need a transfusion or anything. They just kept us for monitoring both her and myself. Well, in the midst of monitoring her, they picked up on some respiratory distress. It felt like she was kind of struggling to breathe. So she ended up with a second ambulance transfer, this time by herself, to our children's hospital, one of our children's hospitals here in Chicago.

suddenly were thrust into this like, wait a second, what is happening? You know, our newborn baby was just taken away in a, in an ambulance. and we were sent straight to the cardiology floor, the top floor of the children's hospital because they're like, well, this is a heart thing we need to know now. and then anyway, so to sum up, she was there for eight days and

than discharged and you know, she's a healthy three and a half almost four year old now. So we didn't deal with what many other folks with NICU experiences deal with in terms of like chronic illness or something that a rare disease that they're or even a very long NICU stay. And all of those caveats aside, like my husband still doesn't.

look at pictures from that time. Like he doesn't want to see the tubes and wires, the oxygen. You know, it really, really impacted us. And so, yeah, that that experience has really contributed to my level of empathy for folks and just greater understanding of what some of the some of the challenges are. And obviously, it's it's unique for each family. But

I definitely feel a lot of protectiveness toward those families, knowing that they are really thrust into this. My husband actually put it away that was so helpful to me. It's like to go from being the patient to the visitor so quickly was such whiplash and is something that was very difficult to process.

And I couldn't process in the moment. It was kind of just like, let's survive this and get this baby home. And then it's like, it all comes crashing down. So yeah, that's my personal NICU experience, or at least some of it.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (13:05)
Yeah, I, I also have a NICU experience. yeah, ours was very similar, where we had a very short but unexpected stay. I had a really crazy labor and delivery and everything wound up being fine for me. but very quickly went south for my son.

He, same thing wound up getting transferred from the NICU or the nursery to a NICU in the city. and I think, the, the whole experience to me was like third person almost that like, was watching someone else doing this and I was just needing to make the things happen to get to the next phase of things. I feel like every day we woke up and I was like,

Christine Wulbecker (13:38)
huh.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (13:50)
All right, here's our schedule for the day. Like this is when they're doing rounds and this is like, I just need, and I'm a very scheduled, not scheduled, but.

Christine Wulbecker (13:54)
Yep.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (13:59)
I'd like to know what's happening next. I'd like to be in control of what my day looks like. And this was so not that. And so I think I there's just like a, another level of survival mode that I think that I didn't know existed. but I think one of the things that is most interesting to me now two years out of it is the caveat that I always feel like I need to make that it was a very short.

stay or I mean ours was seven and a half days so it was very short he wound up being fine it was no big deal but

making that clarification or distinction because there are so many families that have a very long stay or very complicated or very up and down. And I didn't have that experience. My husband and I joke that we had like the ideal NICU experience, but I think it, I can understand why parents who have a very short stay never talk about it. And I think it's because we don't allow ourselves to process that.

I think we don't allow, because it could have been so much worse or because we got to bring our baby home in a short time that we don't feel like we can share that it was really fucking hard and it was really scary. And I think I went to a talk with actually one of your colleagues, Brenda from the IOP program, and she just happened to be talking about NICU families. And she was saying in her experience that

Christine Wulbecker (15:07)
Okay.

Tch.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (15:29)
The NICU families who have a very short stay, she has seen wind up having the most trauma because they don't allow themselves to like process the experience. And it's so scary. It's so, but it's like over in an instant. So you're having these like really high, intense moments for a very short amount of time. And there are not a lot of supports for the people that are there just a short amount of time.

Christine Wulbecker (15:37)
Mmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (15:59)
The families who

are there for months and months have thankfully so much support for them. They have the social workers, they have the support groups. And I think that that's definitely something that's missing for the people that are there a short time. But I would love to know what you have seen on your side on the, well, both personal and professional, but what you have seen in terms of.

Christine Wulbecker (16:14)
Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (16:25)
the distinction that's made

Christine Wulbecker (16:27)
Right, yeah, no, that's a great topic and question. And yeah, when we're in a good space about it, we laugh about it being like parent camp. It's like we learned how to change diapers from NICU nurses who are the best of the best at taking care of babies. But yeah, I also wanna liken it to the way birth trauma is often treated with this like silver lining. At least you have a healthy baby in those circumstances where baby

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (16:38)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Christine Wulbecker (16:54)
does emerge relatively unscathed or can recover and or mom also can recover. I mean, even in my case, I feel almost guilty saying like, yeah, I had a postpartum hemorrhage, but I didn't even feel it. So don't worry about me. But no, I could have bled out on a hospital just right after my birth. That was really significant. So really, I think that's one of the key takeaways for me about

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (17:09)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Christine Wulbecker (17:20)
NICU families is like, really trying to avoid that at least language or that like, and I think a lot, this stuff is so hard to talk about. It's so scary. None of us want to imagine that babies who have just been born are at risk of not making it or of suffering. And yet like, it is they are and it's to like minimize that by saying like, at least you emerged from that or you know, let's find the good in it. Like that I think can do a lot.

to contribute to the psychological damage that people face as they're trying to make sense of this, what could be a very traumatic experience, regardless of how short or long or even the types of support they had. So I also, found this really interesting article, actually through Brenda, she helped me find some great resources, she's the best. It's a 2022 article about

NICU admissions between 2010 and 2018, folks who had a less than two weeks stay in the NICU still had a 19 % higher chance of receiving a mental health diagnosis. And then folks who had a more than two weeks stay had a 37 % higher chance of receiving a mental health diagnosis compared to non -NICU families. So to me that says like,

Of course, more than two weeks is super stressful and like many folks, 37 % of them will receive a mental health diagnosis, right? And yet, even for those of us who quote, only had less than two weeks, a 19 % higher chance is still significant.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (19:00)
Yeah, absolutely. What do you, in your own experience, what were the things that you were surprised about yourself? Like what surprised you about your own experience? I always think like as a family, but like we're all very individually handling it. What did you notice that was?

Christine Wulbecker (19:03)
Yeah, so.

Mmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (19:23)
unexpected for you.

Christine Wulbecker (19:25)
Yeah. Okay, a few things. I really appreciated when people looked at me and my husband and like looked us in the eyes and said like, how are you doing? Or like, here's some information for you to process. Like, obviously the patient in this scenario is the baby and yet you really cannot, you can't separate.

them completely from their family unit. And in fact, it's pretty important that those folks are functioning okay. And I will say like our hospital experience was, like you said, like we had the best case scenario, even as like a breastfeeding mom, they fed me and they gave us a place to stay, like there was a good focus on us. And yet, like just in the day to day interactions, I remember like sitting there during rounds.

while everyone's talking about my baby and I'm just sobbing and no one is even acknowledging that, you know? So that's one thing is just like, hey, I'm here and I am very worried and I want to be as much a part of this as possible because...

this is my kid and I'm still learning that this is my kid or like how to relate to this person as my kid and what it means that I'm a parent now. Can you help me by just including me? You know, I think that was one of the biggest things. And then the second one that really stands out just even off the top of my head is those firsts. And I don't know, you know, if you can really in any specific ways, but like first,

you know, just like diapers and like, I don't know, like putting on a certain onesie or like, day five, like it's the first time that you're five days out, you're not, that's not really, that doesn't really make sense. But you know what I mean? Like, I remember a nurse just making kind of an offhanded comment about like, she really likes the bottle. And I was like, wait, you're giving her, didn't,

could we do that? and what do you she like, you're finding out something about her that she likes something like, I thought I was gonna be, I'm not even coherent, because I feel like I can head right back to that moment in my mind where it's just like, I'm not getting to be the primary caretaker in the way that I anticipated. And that is heartbreaking. And so

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (21:40)
Yeah.

Christine Wulbecker (21:51)
Anytime that folks would invite us into as many of those moments as possible meant a lot. Yeah, those two things, think, just, yeah, being included, I guess, is the summary from those two things.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (22:03)
Yeah.

yeah, I think, I think our experience was, or my experience personally was, was different in that I am known to be like the hyper emotional, like crying on a dime, like,

Very invested and I was shocked to not have been that person whatsoever. It wound up being my husband who was like, everyone jokes, like he's the most unemotional person ever. But when I got pregnant, he like tapped into his emotions really quickly. But then in the NICU, he was a disaster. Like he was a mess and I was the one that was like, I, I think now it's more like knowing what I know. It was more like.

Christine Wulbecker (22:25)
Mmm, mm -hmm.

yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (22:47)
protective of myself and my brain that I would like, I completely by no choice of my own disconnected from the experience. So like I had said, I felt like I was a third party just like watching it all happen. And for a very long time, I, and it's crazy to say now, cause I'm so connected to my son, but I felt like I was just taking care of someone else's baby. And like it's, these are the things that are my responsibility. Like.

Christine Wulbecker (22:49)
Mmm... Sure.

Mm

Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (23:15)
I, we went to every round that they ever did just so that they, Hey, we're the people that are dealing with this situation. So we wanted to one, we wanted to know everything that was happening because there were so many. On no until the day we got discharged, had no idea what was happening with our son. And so we wanted to be at every round. So we were there at 9 a we were there at noon, we were there at three and at six.

Christine Wulbecker (23:21)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah

my gosh.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (23:44)
And so we had, we were at every round. knew every doctor's name. They knew who we were. I think we got a really great experience and that they would do the rounding on their own. they would, everyone would come to his bay. There's like 15 people that are standing there talking at us, but they were like talking to each other. And then afterwards one doctor, every round would stay behind and say, here's the, here's the deep dive of what we were all talking.

Christine Wulbecker (23:45)
my gosh.

Mmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (24:13)
This is what you can expect for the next few hours. And so that was like, me, someone who was like, I need to know what's going on in a very unknown situation. They would always say like, here's what the game plan is, or we don't really know what's going to happen, but here are the options. So I feel like they really over -educated us. But I was also very shocked to find that we were the only parents in the NICU and that every other, every other baby in the NICU.

Christine Wulbecker (24:32)
Hmm.

Hmmmm

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (24:40)
either had a mom that was upstairs that would just come down once in a while, or had been like long -term NICU babies. So we were the only families that were in there, usually. So there wound up being a point where we stayed at Ronald McDonald House, not too far from the hospital. That's a whole other podcast. It was the most incredible experience I could ever.

Christine Wulbecker (24:43)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (25:06)
But we, at one point I distinctly remember this nurse. She was like, you guys need to leave. She was like, we are taking care of your baby. Yeah. He's taking care of, he's eating. If you want to come back and try to feed him, you can, but he has food here that we are, your baby is handled. And they were like, when you get home, you might not have this. So take advantage, but like, go eat a meal, go back to the.

Christine Wulbecker (25:12)
Mmm, yeah. Go sleep.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (25:31)
Ronald McDonald House and take a nap or don't just sit and watch TV, like do something else because you have the opportunity to do it now. Like it's not an ideal situation, but you have to choose the pockets of time that you're able to recover. And one of the nurses was like, this is not how you planned to be postpartum. And I was like, let me tell you, this is very different than what I expected.

Christine Wulbecker (25:38)
Yeah.

Mm

Right?

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (26:00)
And what you were saying with the first, my son didn't even have a first like coming home outfit. And the reason for that was because we had a home birth. So I had a blanket that I was planning just to have him in for the first however many days and our cloth diapers all set up and none of that was something that we could have. so we, mean, my husband didn't even have a hospital bag packed, which was his own error.

Christine Wulbecker (26:08)
Mm -hmm.

my gosh.

Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (26:27)
but we were just like living out of like a duffel bag for a week. so like all those firsts we didn't even think about until later. So it's so interesting that the it's like the very small thing. Like when you're pregnant, you think like all the big things are the biggest deal, but it's really like the smaller things that are like, like we don't have I actually just realized this recently. We don't have footprints.

Christine Wulbecker (26:28)
Hehehehe

Hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (26:57)
or like handprints or anything from my son because once he came out, he was on me for maybe 10 minutes and then immediately taken away. like the very, so we don't have a hospital band, like the very small from his, from the first hospital, we have many hospital bands from the NICU, but yeah, it's so interesting the things that like stick out in your mind. And I don't know.

Christine Wulbecker (26:57)
Mm -hmm.

Right.

Thank you.

Yeah, hooray, hooray, hooray.

Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (27:23)
I would be interested to talk to more NICU families that did have that short experience, because it is so one unknown, but you know that there's like an end in sight, so you kind of like push through till you get there. But I would love to hear other people's experiences coming home, because I felt very much like I was still in that like, I have to take care of this person's baby in my head. And it probably took me like,

Christine Wulbecker (27:33)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Yes, yes.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (27:49)
a month, which doesn't seem like a long time, but in newborn world, seems like forever. Till I felt like I'm this baby's mom, which is so crazy to like think about.

Christine Wulbecker (27:54)
So long, yeah.

Mm hmm. Yes.

That stuck with me also. And I think some of it had to do with I think NICU babies once they discharge are still under a lot of scrutiny and a lot of follow up, which is essential to their survival a lot of times. So I'm not saying we shouldn't be that way. But I do think it can kind of perpetuate this feeling that I'm just collecting data about this science experiment or like this

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (28:25)
Mm

-hmm.

Christine Wulbecker (28:26)
this specimen, you know, and, and we ended up facing a lot of, like feeding challenges in the first few weeks, which is very common for NICU babies. And it was, it was really straining on my bonding with my baby, because it was like, it just became and I don't think NICU families are alone in this experience. I think even if you don't have that experience, it can be this way. But I like just this whole perspective of like,

Okay, well keep an eye on X, keep an eye on Y, keep an eye on Z. And you're used to these monitors checking their oxygen, checking their heart rate, checking their blood pressure. It can become just this data collection mode that is hard to transition out of. even though you know this is not how you intended to feel or to interact with your precious baby.

you sort of go there in a survival mode when you're first facing the NICU stay and then it's hard to come out of it.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (29:23)
Yeah, yeah, I distinctly remember making the conscious choice. I had a friend's mom send me information about the outlet after like to bring him to have and I had to make a very like real conscious decision for myself mentally, like for my mental health and my long term success in my mental health was that

Christine Wulbecker (29:32)
Mm -hmm. the outlet, yes.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (29:50)
I would not get something that would tell me, like you said, data about my son, because I was never like obsessed with it in the NICU. And I do, I could definitely see how it's like, you have so little control over what's happening that like, okay, here's what his oxygen is at. Here's what his heart rate is or whatever. I could see getting released from the NICU and being like,

Christine Wulbecker (29:57)
Yes.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (30:17)
I need to know what's happening. Like going from this very structured environment to then being sent home and like my son didn't have any of like the monitors that we got sent home with. So I knew about myself and it was only because I had previously been connected to mental health care that I knew about myself that if I purchase an outlet, yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Christine Wulbecker (30:18)
Hmm.

Mm

And the risk of promoting anxiety behaviors of checking and, that was wise.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (30:45)
I just knew,

yeah, I knew if I had brought that home that that would be my obsession. And I had spent a week long without my baby attached to me that if I had this other thing that would replace that NICU experience and bring that home with us. And so had I not, I would be interested to know about myself if I had not gone into that like survival mode and just had the

Christine Wulbecker (31:06)
Mm

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (31:13)
than my regular self had I purchased that and been like, this is exactly what I need. Whereas my brain was like, we don't need that. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Christine Wulbecker (31:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, like this is gonna keep us in hyper vigilant mode. Yeah,

I think we're very similar in that my mom really wanted me to get it. And I was like, like fought her back. I'm like, this is not gonna be good for me. And this is already how I'm, I'm thinking about things. And this is only gonna perpetuate that. Yeah. And I think you said, you know, you said earlier, just the difference between your husband's experience. And I said also like my husband's experience.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (31:30)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Mm

Christine Wulbecker (31:47)
I think it is of course important to acknowledge like everybody responds differently. know, non birthing partners for different reasons can respond differently, whether they feel disconnected or, or they're more emotional or less emotional or whatever. Like, and of course it bears mentioning that like non white families can face a lot of challenges that white families don't have to face or are privileged to be sheltered from. And just like,

the whole like having to trust the medical system and with like keeping your child alive and trusting that they're going to communicate the important things to you and believe you and all of these things that like it should be so basic and yet are not, you know, we can't always assume that especially for people of color. But yeah, it is so, so yeah, it's very individual and you know,

communal, I guess, in the ways that we process it in the moment and then that we continue to process it. It was crazy to me also to find data about how postpartum psychological functioning can be associated with length of stay. so it kind of, like we talked about how length of stay can impact psychological functioning, but

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (32:54)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Christine Wulbecker (33:01)
psychological functioning can also impact length of stay. And so again, I think there are just so many reasons to be aware of NICU parents and just like knowing that there's such a high risk of experiencing distress and helplessness and stress and like all the things and hypervigilance and all the things that we've been talking about.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (33:05)
Interesting.

Yeah. What are some of the tips that you would give someone either with a long stay or short stay on how to one navigate through while like keeping yourself as healthy as possible, but also kind of like transitioning from the NICU back home, what that all looks like and what advice you would give to somebody both as a, as a NICU mom, but then as a practitioner as well.

Christine Wulbecker (33:38)
Mm

Yeah. So in terms of like getting through that survival mode of being there, I think a few things come to mind. One is just being as gentle and kind to yourself as possible and really giving yourself a lot of credit. Like that what you're doing is parenting. think that was something that I struggled with as well was like, okay, I can't even like, I can't take you out of this room. Like what is, this is not.

the parenting that I imagined or you you have a radius of this small room like, because you're attached to this bed. And that was really frustrating. And I really, you know, felt worried about how she was feeling about it and all these things. so like watching out for those guilt and shame triggers of, know, I'm not doing what I...

thought of like there's and like there's grief too right like not just the guilt and shame but there's like also just plain grief that this is not what I expected this is sad that I'm I'm suffering my baby's suffering we're there are losses here of like what I wanted or what I thought and so again like that grace that that patience that kindness towards yourself and you know

Obviously the typical things that we talk to postpartum families about in terms of self care and just like keeping an eye on our sleep, support, self care, son, you know, just kind of those basic things. But I think it's that much harder for folks who are stuck in the NICU or feel like they can't leave the NICU for us to get those things because we are so focused on the baby.

So it is really, really reminding ourselves like what I'm doing for myself is something that I'm doing for my baby, especially the sleep portion because we know that that has such a link to mental health. But the other things too, inviting your support system in as much as you can, which can again be even trickier for NICU families because maybe they can't see the baby in the same way or they can't help with the baby in the ways that

you wanted them to. But yeah, relying on the nurses, like you said, like trust as much as you can, like trusting them for even short periods of time so that you can get a break. And yeah, just like remembering that those things and filling your own cup, putting your own oxygen mask first are of benefit to your baby.

getting outside, like getting the sun and vitamin D in your system, like eating, showering, things that can feel just like almost impossible because you're trying so hard to just stay with this baby. Or yeah, so really those kind of basic self care things. And again, allowing it to be the individual experience that it is. And one more thing about support I would say is like,

Even for families who don't face a NICU stay, a lot of times the support that's needed isn't even related exactly to the baby. It's more about the other stuff, right? So like, give my dog some attention for me or make a few freezer meals for me or whatever you can, please clean my bathroom. The things that, the other stuff, the other life stuff.

it can be the stuff that really is harder to manage.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (37:07)
Yeah. And I think, I think bringing in the support you want and need at that time is incredible as well. think, I always tell people, like people want to help. They just don't know how to. And I don't necessarily think it's always on the mom to say this is exactly what I need. And this is what I, this is what you should do. But I think in the, like for me in this scenario,

Christine Wulbecker (37:13)
Mmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (37:34)
I was constantly giving updates to people. Like my husband and I were both, we had a group text with the grandmas and people were messaging me asking what's going on. Is everything okay? How are you doing? And I was choosing to not respond to those. and, and I had told our moms, if anybody asks, here's the information that you can share. Please don't share pictures. Please don't like I gave the parameters of what I'm on at our moms to share.

Christine Wulbecker (37:42)
yeah.

Mm

Mmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (38:02)
because there was so much unknown that I didn't want to like put all this information out. And it was, it was such a weird thing of like, it's not my, it's not me. It's not my medical experience. Like it's my son's experience who one day will be a part of his medical story. It's not even about me. So I was very protective of like this, the things I wanted to share with my support people. But then part of that was like,

Christine Wulbecker (38:03)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (38:31)
I was hearing and talking about medical stuff all day long, that I had a group text of my girlfriends that I was like, I will give you an update once a day. Otherwise, I don't want to talk anything about being in the NICU about my baby, about my birth. Like I only wanted to know what was happening in their lives because I needed something so different than what I was experiencing. Yeah. So for me,

Christine Wulbecker (38:50)
Yeah.

Outside, yes.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (38:57)
that was the kind of support I needed that I was like, I gotta get out of this. Like I am focused on this 24, it's like in every cell of my being right now. I just need to talk about like the date you went on or like your weekend plans or like what your work drama is because I was not getting that and was so consumed by what was happening that I just needed that tiny little window of an outlet. So I would also say on the support side.

Christine Wulbecker (39:01)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (39:23)
ask for the support that you feel like you need at the time and like don't judge yourself for it and don't have these like parameters on what you think you should need. Because I was very much that way as well. Like, okay, well, if I was home, what would I need? And that was not the case. That's not where I was. Yeah. Yeah. So and I would also say in terms of like the self care part of things is that I did not offer myself any self

Christine Wulbecker (39:29)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, it doesn't, wasn't relevant. Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (39:50)
care, I was like, I need to be there. I need to quickly one day postpartum walk to the bus to get to the, to the NICU so that I don't miss the first rounds. And I think it took me probably till the last day to be like, okay, I can like relax a little bit, but because I didn't prioritize taking care of myself and letting my body recover, I paid for it tenfold by the time I got home.

Christine Wulbecker (40:16)
Mmm... my gosh.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (40:20)
So

not only like I could, thinking back, was like, my God, you could have just been sitting in the NICU relaxing. Like if that's a thing, but like I could have been allowing myself more grace in that timeframe to, yeah, yeah. And I felt like really shitty about it. Like my son is in a hospital bed, like attached to things and I like.

Christine Wulbecker (40:26)
No!

Yes, that per giving yourself permission for yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (40:45)
want to go to the nail salon next door just because my feet are so swollen that I like can barely put shoes on. But I was like, I'm going to sit in a nail salon while my son's in the NICU. Like, that's crazy. But hindsight, I was like, that's probably what I needed to just sit, be alone, decompress, have my enormous feet rubbed because I was walking around the city all day. So I think allowing yourself the grace.

Christine Wulbecker (40:47)
EEEE

Mmm

Mmm.

No!

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (41:13)
to give yourself that self care that you need. And doing those things is taking care of your baby because your baby is always getting the care that they need when they're in the NICU that allowing yourself the hour or two hours to just like decompress, relax, however best you can is being helpful because I was doing a lot less than I expected I would once I got home.

Christine Wulbecker (41:16)
Yes.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (41:42)
because I was so hard on myself during that timeframe. So I think one, figuring out like what is support to you right then and your scenario is a lot different than what you expected. And then giving yourself enough grace to say like, it's okay that I take a backseat for an hour. And I think had I not gotten the permission from the nurses to do that was, don't think I would have. I don't think I would have gone back

Christine Wulbecker (41:49)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Mm, right.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (42:09)
to take a nap after our 12 o 'clock rounds if a nurse hadn't been like, you guys need to go. Like you can't stay here all day. So I think I'm very grateful for those people. The nurses and the hospital staff are just like incredible. I mean, you obviously get some that aren't as aligned with you and your values, but I think, yeah, I think kind of like being open to the experience and like,

Christine Wulbecker (42:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm, sure.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (42:39)
pulling out the things that you need from it can be weird to think about, but very helpful long -term.

Christine Wulbecker (42:46)
Mm

hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and, of course, like, I think sometimes families when thinking about how to get through that time, families need reminders that like, kind of getting at what I was saying before about like, you are parenting, like, sing to the baby, talk to the baby, if it feels like you can, knowing that it's okay if you don't, you know, like, we're just getting through.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (43:12)
Right.

Christine Wulbecker (43:13)
hour by hour, day by day. But if you feel like you want to, you know, put the baby in a silly hat, and that's something that the nurses are okay with you do, I don't know, like, taking pictures of the baby, doing, trying to do some of the things that you, that you wanted to do before you knew that this would happen, or, you know, that will help you feel, feel connected and bonded. And I'm also thinking about families who don't have the privilege of both

parents being there at all or much or, you know, have to kind of just come visit after work because they're going right back to work. And so like, FaceTiming and pictures and like, and then also just acknowledging like the need for compartmentalization and like, sure, that comes at a cost and it's something that we don't want to always do. We want to, you know, face some of the things that are really that are all the things that are hard.

and allow the feelings to show up. But also sometimes that's a survival strategy too, is being able to compartmentalize. Like you were saying, about like talking with your friends about other stuff. It's like, sure, you know, I want to process how I'm doing, but like, I also just need a break from this and I need to distract myself a little bit. So yeah, just again, like permission for all the different ways. Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (44:21)
Mm -hmm.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, I was also going to say for afterwards, I can't remember if I asked or not, but advice for afterwards is that whether you were there for one day or a hundred days, I would always suggest getting connected to a person that you can effectively process with because I think it's going to show up.

Christine Wulbecker (44:34)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (44:53)
whether you want it to or not, matter how compartmentalized it is. it very much did for me. It very much still does for me. Like I said, I have not talked about my experience on the podcast. This is probably the most I've talked about it simply because it's, it's very private for me. And I realized that having gone through a birth trauma, like processing.

Christine Wulbecker (44:53)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (45:18)
and because I had this podcast, I was already connected to someone prior who does birth trauma processing. And, I never thought I would need her, but I did. And so I reached out to her right away and I reached out to her for my husband, cause I knew that he would need to process it all thinking like, I'll be fine. Like I see a therapist once a month, I'll be fine. But I didn't realize until meeting with her together that I had so much that I was like,

Christine Wulbecker (45:28)
Bye.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (45:48)
holding on to and wasn't talking about on a regular basis that the second somebody asked me like a very Not even in depth but like a question that like really hit me specifically that I just lost it and that could have happened anywhere at any time so had I not spoken with someone and said walked through my whole story and had like feeling valid about the way I was

Christine Wulbecker (46:05)
Mmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (46:17)
diving into my feelings, but then feeling validated that this is a scary situation and the way you felt was real. I think I would not have done that and it would have shown up in other places. I also did EMDR for the birth trauma part of things and that was life -changing. And had I not been connected to care, I wouldn't have known that that was an option. But I think...

Christine Wulbecker (46:45)
put a plug here too, just I learned a new, or I learned a modality recently, new to me, not new out there, but perinatal narrative exposure therapy, which is a short term narrative exposure based treatment, and I think can be super powerful for folks both with birth trauma, even if it's not with NICU, but also with NICU. And I think, especially with

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (46:55)
Mm

Christine Wulbecker (47:10)
perinatal stuff, is so much, there's so much sensory information, which is always, you know, there's always a component of that when it comes to traumatic memories. But I think, you know, NICU, there's so much that you see, hear, smell, you know, so I feel like those are just such touch points where we can go back and reprocess some of the trauma. So yeah, EMDR, perinatal, NET, narrative exposure therapy.

There are some really great and evidence -based modalities to help address some of these things, even in a short -term solution -based, you know, focused way. Obviously lots of different ways that therapists help treat, you know, the aftermath of NICU stays with folks. But yeah, those are two great ones.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (47:58)
Yeah, I agree. think if you can one, get connected to care just to process it. It's a lot and it's a lot happening and you shouldn't have to hold it together on your own, I feel. So I think one, getting connected to somebody who you can talk about it, judgment free, say the things you need to say, cry, don't cry, whatever, just getting it out there and feeling validated in your experience I think can be.

experience changing, I guess. Not that the experience is going to change, but the way that you look back on it might change a bit. And I think something that...

Christine Wulbecker (48:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Yes, right. And like the coherent

narrative that you're, that you want to integrate into your life and into your parenting and your relationship with your kid, which I mean, one of the, often tends to be one of the most important things for, for parents is like, yeah, this, this is super important to me that I have this cohesive, coherent, integrated narrative about our life together and our relationship.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (48:45)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, because I was in that survival mode and I felt for so long that I was taking care of someone else's baby. think having someone who was like, here's why you feel that way. And here are an example of why you might have gone that route instead of this route. think was very validating to me. And that like,

Christine Wulbecker (49:12)
Mmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (49:20)
It's a normal thing that your brain did to help you get through the situation. It doesn't mean that that's going to be your relationship with your baby forever or your child or teen or into their adulthood. That doesn't have to be like the mark on your relationship. And I was very fearful that it would be. So I think having that person be like, Hey, this is normal. This is why I'm like a Y person. I need to know exactly why this happened. So I think that was key.

Christine Wulbecker (49:23)
Yes.

Yes.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (49:49)
Another thing that I thought was really cool about the person that I spoke with was that she did not want to meet with us to like an X amount of time after we got discharged. And she was like, you're in such a heightened state that you're not even gonna remember everything that's happening. So like, I want your body to have time to calm down as much as it can from this like very high level, high anxiety, high stress area. So like when you come home from the,

Christine Wulbecker (49:58)
you

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (50:16)
hospital, it's not always over. And so for us, it was, we had a couple follow -up visits and that was really it. But for a lot of families, it's not over. So I think, I wouldn't be shocked if some families like stayed in that high intensity, like high panic. so I think whether you meet with someone right when you come home or again in six months or two years later, whatever it is, I think, it's a good opportunity to kind of like,

Christine Wulbecker (50:20)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (50:45)
not have to feel like you're holding it yourself.

Christine Wulbecker (50:48)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I think if you're, you know, exhibiting some pretty clear signs of PTSD, then I would say like, probably get in sooner than later. But like, if, if that's, yeah, if not, then give yourself the time that you need and follow your intuition about when you're ready to have that conversation. And yet I also like to advocate on the other side, like, get

If you need permission, like if you think, is this important enough or big enough? Like, yes, yes it is. exactly, right. can wait as long as you need and yet don't wait because you think you don't deserve it or it's not a big enough deal.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (51:21)
Yeah, yeah, let this be the permission. It's yeah, go definitely. Yeah.

Right,

right, yeah, yeah. I love that. I think that's the perfect place to put a period on this conversation. I could talk to you forever about this. yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story and where you've kind of been with the NICU experience. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you?

Christine Wulbecker (51:41)
I know, I know.

Yeah, so Emili Counseling, it's E -I -L -I -E Counseling. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn. And then my website is www .emilicounseling .com. I do free consultation, so if you are in that space of just like, is this something that I'm ready to process or is something that needs to be processed or worked through?

Reach out. I'd love to chat with you even just briefly to see how I might be able to be of help or connect you with other folks from my network. I am helping lead a book club through the Professional Women's Club of Chicago on the book Burnout. So that can be another space where we can connect if you are a reader like me, women's mental health stuff. So that is on the Professional Women's Club of Chicago's website.

I have a moms group going on, Intentional Mamas, and would love to host you if you're in the Chicagoland area wanting to connect with other moms. Lots of good stuff going on.

Jessica | The Mama Making Podcast (52:51)
Yeah, that's amazing. So we'll put all those in the show, all the links in the show notes for where to find you as well as the groups you're running. Thank you again so much for being here. I appreciate your time.

Christine Wulbecker (53:02)
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.