Once discharged from the hospital after giving birth you will find yourself traveling often between the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and your home, or wherever you are temporarily staying. One way you can prepare to care for yourself and for your new baby in the weeks or months ahead is to pack a NICU Parenting Bag to streamline your daily routine. Download a FREE Packing Checklist at the bottom of the page!
What You Should Know
Every family’s NICU journey is unique and grief can be a rollercoaster. One constant to hold close to your heart is to know that your baby needs you right now—YOU are the most important person in your baby’s world. Visit your baby as often and for as long as you are able and want to. Get to know your baby and get to know the nurses and doctors caring for your family during this time.
Parenting a sick baby in the NICU can be overwhelming and exhausting, your NICU Parenting Bag should include items for your own convenience and self care. Treat yourself to a bag you love: repurpose the diaper bag you had picked out, or choose a new bag or backpack for this important task. You’ll carry your Parenting Bag daily to and from your car, through parking decks, down long halls and corridors, up and down stairs and floors—comfortable straps are a must! A roomy interior and multitasking pockets or compartments for organization will optimize versatility. If you are establishing or maintaining your milk supply during your baby’s hospitalization your winning gear combo for the NICU will be your Parenting Bag, your pump (for the car ride), and a small cooler for your milk.
What You Should Pack
Research, Communication, and Entertainment
Depending on how often and for how long you visit, in between caring for your baby and talking with providers you may find yourself with a little or a lot of downtime at your baby’s bedside. Your phone and a charger are essential in the NICU. A laptop, tablet, headphones, and any necessary chargers or adaptors can offer another layer of convenience to do timely online research, communicate with friends and family, and prevent boredom. If you don’t have your own laptop many NICUs have a resource library where at least one computer with internet access is made available to parents and family, as well as print materials on topics relevant to the NICU and parenting. Bring your own book or kindle for pleasure reading. Listen to music. Rest or relax with a meditation app. Now is a great time to tune in to your favorite podcast, download the latest viral app game, or catch up on movies, tv shows, and network originals.
Please keep in mind that personal devices harbor a lot of infectious germs—to protect your baby’s health, thoroughly clean yours with a device-specific antimicrobial wipe at every visit. Your NICU should make these wipes readily available and show you how to properly use them, ask your baby’s nurse!
Pack: Phone, laptop, tablet, headphones, chargers, adaptors, and accessories. Books or a kindle.
Journal
Parenting in the NICU is intensive. Writing can help you sort through, organize, and make sense of your experience in real time and may serve as a treasured keepsake later. Not sure where to begin?
Make a list;
Keep track of questions you have for your baby’s doctors and nurses;
Record a short anecdote or memory;
Draft a narrative of events;
Brain dump your feelings and thoughts;
Write a letter to your baby;
Take notes on your baby’s status and progress;
Jot down and celebrate every milestone.
For electronic journal options check out Evernote, or Journey App, and consider the Note functions already built into your phone. If paper and pen are more your style the Every Tiny Thing Journal is a NICU specific journal, but a blank journal or notebook will do the job just fine. Instagram or Facebook can serve as a public option with the added opportunity to build community around your journey.
Pack: An electronic or paper journal of your choice, pen or pencil.
Nutrition and Hydration
The NICU is an intensive care unit and food is generally not permitted on the floor. Microwaved or home cooked meals and liquid snacks like yogurt, juice, and soup can be labeled, stored, and heated in the Family Lounge—a designated space for parents usually located just outside the secure zone of the NICU. The re-entry process to complete a rigorous hand-washing protocol and then sign back in to the NICU can sometimes feel like a deterrent to leave the NICU for any reason, but especially for food. Do Not Go Hungry! Convenient dry snacks and a closed water bottle (with a lid, or straw) are usually allowed. Eat meals in regular intervals and stay hydrated. Keep your energy up between meals with granola bars, fruit snacks, jerky, and other portable dry goods tucked neatly in your Parenting Bag.
Pack: An assortment of your favorite portable dry snacks, and a water bottle with lid or straw.
Comfort Measures
Back pain and cramps from your uterus returning back to size after birth, or pain related to cesarean section recovery, episiotomy, or perineal tears only intensifies what is already challenging as you navigate the NICU with your baby. Effective pain management is a must: heat and medication can help. Did you know that alternating Tylenol (Acetaminophen) and Ibuprofen (Motrin or Advil) every-three-hours around the clock can provide adequate pain relief after surgery without opioids? Ask your provider to tell you about all your pain management options and then decide which combination is best for you. Keep some of your over-the-counter or prescription pain relief medication with you in your Parenting Bag so you can proactively manage your pain and stay as comfortable as possible during your visit.
Pack: Electric or disposable heating pads for back and belly, over-the-counter or prescription pain relief medication.
Chapstick and Hand Lotion
A nice chapstick will protect your lips against dry hospital air and outside elements no matter the time of year, and a favorite hand lotion applied as you leave the hospital will replenish moisture lost from frequent hand washing and use of hand sanitizers.
Pack: Chapstick, hand lotion.
Hair Ties
Hair ties and a comfy cotton headband will help hold back long hair or bangs during kangaroo care, pumping, and breastfeeding.
Pack: Hair ties and a cotton headband.
Socks
Trade your shoes for socks at your baby’s bedside, and rest your feet. An extra cozy pair of socks are a little luxury in the NICU and will help you feel comfortable and warm when pumping, nursing, kangarooing, or relaxing with your baby. Plan to leave your socks in your baby’s NICU space or take them home to wash after each visit.
Pack: A pair or two of your warmest, coziest socks.
Nap Essentials
Let’s be honest. The hospital, and especially a NICU is a terrible place to find rest—but it is possible! There will be short lulls in the day when you may find space and time for a catnap midday, or overnight. In an open bay NICU you may have a reclining chair to rest in while private NICU rooms will offer a pull out couch and a curtain screen for your privacy. Soft foam ear plugs, and an eye mask (or a sweatshirt hood over your eyes) will help block out noise and light.
Pack: Ear plugs, eye mask.
Toiletries
Your daily routine may feel unrelenting while your baby is hospitalized. The days can be long and at times you may be stressed, sweaty, smelly, exhausted, or all of the above. On a whim you may decide to stay into the early morning or even spend the night. Prepare for those moments by packing what you’d like to have on hand for a quick, easy, and convenient refresh: makeup essentials, oil blotting sheets, cleansing face and body wipes, a toothbrush and paste, deodorant, dry shampoo, and extra pads for postpartum bleeding. Some NICUs have showers available for parents to use. If you want to plan ahead for overnights you can pack a doppler kit and leave it in your baby’s space at the NICU, include: travel shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, a toothbrush and paste, a brush or comb, and any other items that will help give you a nice reset so you can keep going.
Pack: Any items you’d like to have on hand for a refresh: makeup, oil blotting sheets, makeup remover wipes, body wipes, toothbrush and paste, deodorant, dry shampoo, pads for postpartum bleeding, a stocked doppler kit for overnight.
Wet Bag
A wet bag is a reusable, waterproof, and leak resistant pouch you can use to store dirty items from the NICU that need to go home for a wash. Loveys or blankets that drop on the floor, baby clothes, used bedding, and any of your own clothing that you change out of during a visit—your wetbag will keep the dirty stuff separated from your clean stuff, and keep hospital germs contained until you get home and can throw all of it straight into the washing machine. Most wet bags roll up nicely for storage, so they won’t take up a lot of space in your Parenting Bag.
Pack: A medium to large wetbag.
Extra Stuff for baby
Don’t forget to pack any baby items that may need to be replaced, restocked, or refreshed in the NICU.
Pack: Clean blankets, new pacifiers, bedding, clothing, or loveys.
Establishing or Maintaining your Milk Supply?
Breast Pump Car Charger or Vehicle Lighter Adapter
Establishing and maintaining a milk supply is a lot of work (High Five—you’re doing it!) and the demands of an 8-12 session/day pumping schedule will have you feeling as if you either just wrapped up from your last pumping session or are just gearing up for your next one. Time is precious so reclaim a little bit of it by using a breast pump car charger or vehicle lighter adapter to plug directly into your car so you can pump while driving to and from the hospital. Wear a hands-free pumping bra and a pumping/breastfeeding-friendly shirt when you visit so you can safely car pump, as well as comfortably pump and breastfeed in the NICU. Car pumping can be helpful while running errands, out on a date with your partner, or anytime on the go that fits into your schedule.
Pack: Breast pump car charger or vehicle lighter adapter, hands free pumping bra, breastfeeding friendly shirt. Oh and your pump!
Cooler for Pumped Milk
A small insulated cooler or lunch box makes it easy to grab fresh or frozen milk from home and transport it directly to your baby’s nurses who will show you how best to properly store it and portion it out for your baby’s current nutritional needs.
Pack: A small insulated cooler or lunch box.
Download Your NICU Parenting Bag Checklist!
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