Dear anonymous parent [see first article on previous page], 


I wanted to write to you because my son also had a traumatic birth. He was fighting for his life and had a long neonatal intensive care unit stay. It was so hard—for him, for me, for his dad. First, I want to say I am so sorry this happened. It’s hard to experience these things in the first few days and weeks of life.


It sounds like you have been there for many tears and much closeness through the years, and that’s wonderful. It’s a good foundation. And your daughter has shown her feelings and wanted help—that’s good! 


My son is ten now. We started talking to him about his birth as honestly as possible as early as he started asking about it. We would give just little bits of information and continue only as he asked. Some of the questions we didn’t know how to answer. (We don’t know exactly why he was struggling as much as he was when he was born—but breathing did not come immediately, and he was intubated and suffered brain injuries. We don’t know why, and neither does he.)


I had to discharge a lot of heartbreak after the talks with him. He wanted to hear beautiful stories about how wonderful it was when he was born. And then he would find out that he was separated from us, intubated, and on life support for days. 


Maybe once per year he wants the whole story. Each time he starts to remember the last time we talked about it. The talks have been a slow process of un-occlusion.


Occasionally we have initiated telling the story, when he is clearly facing some hard things and we want to remind him of his power or give him a chance to do more direct work on it (mostly through play and roughhousing with us). We have only continued talking about it (or playing about it) if he perks up and starts asking questions or making it into a game.


We try not to editorialize too much, just give him facts. We wonder aloud what it must have been like for him and see what he thinks.


We have tried to give him a balance of attention, by talking about how incredibly wonderful and amazing it is that he is here, that he was born. We say that it is and was a joyous thing, and also that it was one of the hardest things because of the early struggle. We talk about how powerful he was and how powerfully he healed and is still healing. We talk a lot about how proud we are of him, sometimes with tears ourselves. I can hardly ever tell the story without crying. But I think that’s been okay for him to see.


We tell him that even though it was hard, he learned a lot about healing; that he is aware of himself as someone who can overcome challenges; and that some of his strengths come from having prevailed at such a tender age. He had significant disabilities early on, and he’s made tremendous recovery over the years. There are still some struggles, physically and emotionally, yet he has set a precedent in his life of setting his mind to healing and winning.


Perhaps for your daughter the information will not only give her a context for her struggles but also some perspective on her power and strength and the chance to write her own story and choose her perspectives on it.


I think it’s been good for our son to have the information. When he was younger, he would make up games in which he was clearly trying to work on the birth material [distress]. Like he would crawl out from between my legs and have me scream, “Welcome!” in a thrilled voice. We would do it over and over and over. He would often surprise me with the ways he would find to work with the information.


The thing about sharing the information is that your child will find ways to work with it, ways that you wouldn’t think of because of your own distress.


My son still has some struggles that we don’t yet know how to help him with. But when we do try to work on things, it is good to have a shared understanding of the birth story as a context and to use it to remind him that he can move through, and has moved through, hard things; that he is good at it.


I will be thinking of you and wishing the best for you and your daughter. She sounds wonderful, deep, and caring. And you are clearly a wonderful parent.