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Emily O'Sullivan, Trauma-Informed Parent Wellness Specialist

@kintsugi_my_heart

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For NICU + Medical parents who didn't get the journey they expected 🤍
Trauma, grief, joy, and everything between
👇🏻 Soft landing here

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“How old is your baby?”

A perfectly normal question.
Unless you have a preemie. 😅

Because now we need to know:

Do you want their chronological age?
Their adjusted age?
Are we still talking gestational/postmenstrual age?
Do you want me to explain how early they were?
Should I pull out a calculator?

How much time do you have??

The good news: all of those ages have a purpose.

And understanding which one matters can make a HUGE difference when you’re looking at milestones, growth, feeding, sleep and development.

Because a baby born 12 weeks early shouldn’t automatically be expected to develop on the exact same timeline as a baby who had those additional 12 weeks in utero.

And yet NICU parents are constantly doing this math in their heads.

So we made it easier.

Our newest blog breaks down gestational age, chronological age and adjusted age AND there’s an adjusted-age calculator so you can stop doing NICU algebra every time someone asks. 😂

Head to the link in our bio. Then on our blog post → Your Baby’s Three Ages.

Save this for the next time your brain refuses to calculate how old your baby “actually” is.💕

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Hi! I’m Emily 🤍

Two beautiful humans call me Mom. One of them I can only hear in my heart. Both of them made me a NICU and medical parent.

For over 16 years, I’ve worked as a pediatric occupational therapist specializing in infant mental health, supporting families through NICU stays, hard diagnoses, and unexpected beginnings. Then I lived it from the other side, as a NICU parent, a medical parent, and a bereaved parent.

I would never wish that path on anyone. But it gave me an understanding and compassion I couldn’t have learned any other way, and it’s become my calling.

Now I bring together my OT training, my work as a Certified Trauma-Informed Grief Coach, and my lived experience to help parents find the “just right” tools to feel steadier, more confident, and more connected to their babies.

Over here, you’ll hear me talk about child development, medical parenting, grief, bonding and attachment, and how our nervous system carries us through every chapter of life.

I’m part OT, part guttingly compassionate friend, and part parent who has been there.

That’s why I created the NICU Hearts Collective. Because your story, your experiences, and your family’s health all matter.

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NICU discharge education is incredibly important.

Parents learn medications.
Feeding schedules.
Warning signs.
Follow-up appointments.
When to call the pediatrician.
How to use equipment.
What to watch for.

All of that matters.

But how many parents are prepared for what may happen in their own brain and body once they get home?

✅The hypervigilance.
✅The checking.
✅The anxiety that spikes when the baby sleeps longer than usual.
✅The grief that finally shows up once the crisis slows down.
✅The emotional crash after weeks or months of functioning in survival mode.
✅The fear of medical appointments.
✅The difficulty trusting good news.
✅The strange realization that everyone else is celebrating discharge while part of you still feels like you’re standing beside the isolette.

We do an incredible job preparing NICU parents to care for medically vulnerable babies.

We need to get equally serious about preparing them for the psychological transition home.

Because discharge planning shouldn’t only answer:

“How do we keep this baby safe?”

It should also make room for:

“How might this experience affect the parent, and what support will they need afterward?”

That isn’t extra.

That is part of comprehensive NICU care.

If you’re navigating the part that comes after discharge and want support from people who understand it, comment SUPPORT and I’ll DM you information about NICU Hearts Collective. 💌

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Okay, yes, we can laugh because NICU parents really do leave the hospital knowing words we never wanted in our vocabulary. 😂

But underneath the joke is something important,

NICU parents experience an enormous medical learning curve in a very short amount of time.

You learn oxygen saturation.
Respiratory support.
Labs.
Medications.
Feeding volumes.
Weight changes.
Heart rates.
Procedures.
Symptoms to watch for.
Questions to ask on rounds.

You learn that tiny changes can matter.
And sometimes, you learn that your observations matter too.

For days, weeks, or months, paying close attention isn’t anxiety; it’s part of parenting your medically fragile baby.

Then you go home and suddenly the message becomes:

“Stop monitoring so much.”

“Don’t Google it.”

“Try not to worry.”

But your brain doesn’t automatically know which vigilance is no longer necessary.

The goal is helping NICU families slowly learn the difference between:

“This needs my attention.”

and

“My nervous system remembers a time when everything needed my attention.”

That distinction can take practice.
And a whole lot more compassion than “just stop Googling.”

💌If this sounds familiar, save it or send it to someone who needs to understand why coming home from the NICU doesn’t automatically turn off the medical vigilance.

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One of the quickest ways to shut down connection with a NICU parent is to respond with:

“At least…” or

“But you’re so lucky!”

Most of the time, people say these things because they’re trying to help.

They want to offer hope.
Perspective.
Reassurance.

But statements like these can unintentionally communicate:

Let’s move away from the painful part of your story as quickly as possible.

And that’s the opposite of empathetic listening.

Empathy doesn’t require us to fix the feeling, find the silver lining, or remind someone what they should be grateful for.

Sometimes it sounds more like:

“That sounds incredibly hard.”

“I can see why that still affects you.”

“I’m so glad your baby is here. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that.”

“Do you want to tell me more about what that was like for you?”

Because NICU parents often carry stories that people have never slowed down long enough to actually hear.

We don’t always need someone to make the experience feel better.

Often we need someone willing to sit with the fact that it was hard.

No qualifier required.

Save this for the next time someone wants to support a NICU parent well.💌

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Nothing can send a NICU parent from “I’m fine” to fully activated quite like seeing the NICU, pediatrician, or specialist pop up on caller ID. 😅

Because your 🧠 doesn’t just see a phone call.

It may see:

➡️Something changed.
➡️There’s a problem.
➡️They found something.
➡️Get ready.

That reaction can happen before you even answer.

After the NICU, your nervous system can become incredibly sensitive to cues associated with uncertainty, medical information, and bad news. So even a completely routine call can hit your body like an emergency.

And then you answer and they’re like:

“Hi! Just confirming your appointment for Thursday.”

Meanwhile your heart rate has entered another dimension. 😂

We get it.

This is exactly the kind of post-NICU nervous system response we talk about inside NICU Hearts Collective. Cause sometimes the crisis is over, but your body still reacts like the next update could change everything.

If you’re looking for support that actually understands life after the NICU, comment “SUPPORT” and I’ll DM you the link to NICU Hearts Collective. We have a free 7 day trial!💌

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So often your body remembers the helplessness of those moments long after the medical crisis has ended.

And healing can include making space for the grief of what you didn’t get to choose, experience, or hold onto.

If this is part of your NICU story too, you don’t have to make sense of it alone.

Inside the NICU Hearts Collective, we create space for the parts of the experience that can linger long after discharge.

Come join us if you’re looking for support from people who truly get it. 💕

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Sometimes healing after the NICU means finally making space for the grief nobody told you was allowed.

Not only grief for what happened.

But grief for:

what didn’t happen.⬅️

Save this for the day one of those losses catches you by surprise.

Share it with a NICU parent who may need permission to name theirs. And tell us, what’s something you were surprised to grieve?💌

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Sometimes the future feels blurry because the present is still so full.

You’re home but you may still be coordinating specialists, therapies, medications, insurance calls, medical bills, work, childcare, sleep, and the needs of everyone else in your family.

That takes capacity.

So if you can’t seem to think six months ahead right now, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your hope or your ambition.

Sometimes your brain is simply saying:
I have enough to carry today.

And it’s incredibly important we recognize this.

NICU recovery isn’t just about processing what happened in the hospital. It’s also about acknowledging the very real weight that can follow families home.

Future planning often gets easier when there is more support in the present; more margin, more safety, more people helping you hold what feels heavy.

If this series made you feel deeply seen, that’s exactly why we exist. The NICU Hearts Collective: a space for families during and after the NICU to find support, education, resources, and people who actually understand the complexity of this experience.

You don’t have to have the next five years figured out.

Sometimes the next step is simply creating a little more room to breathe today.💌

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The weird part about post-NICU anxiety is that sometimes life can look completely normal on the outside…

while your brain is still running twelve background tabs. 😅

Did that breathing sound different?
Did they eat enough?
Was that color normal?
Should I call?
Should I Google it?
Am I overreacting?
What if I’m not?

That’s hypervigilance.

After the NICU, your brain can get very good at scanning for subtle changes because, for a while, subtle changes really did matter.

The problem is that your nervous system doesn’t always update as quickly as your circumstances do.

So yes, you can be home.
Your baby can be doing well.
And part of you can still be waiting for the next emergency.

That’s exactly the kind of thing we unpack inside NICU Hearts Collective; the mental health shifts , nervous system, developmental, and family impact that can continue long after discharge.

If the NICU is technically over but part of you still feels like you’re living on alert, come join us. Link in bio.💌

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What an amazing first day! Thank you to each and every one of you who who’ve trusted us to join you on the journey. We are incredibly honored to walk with you. See ya inside the Collective!💌 If you want to jump in, check out the link in bio or comment “hearts” and we’ll send you the link.

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I know for me the ISOLATION from the NICU was real. No one in my life really understood my experience. And I know I’m not the only parent who’s felt this way.

That is exactly why NICU Hearts Collective exists.

A place where you can say what’s happening now without first having to explain everything that happened then.

Where people understand the weight behind the moment.

Doors open tomorrow. 💕
If you’ve been looking for a space where you don’t have to translate your NICU experience before you can be supported, we built this for you.

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