1. It’s normal to spend hours, days, weeks, and months in hospital rooms.
2. You’re a light sleeper and wake up to the slightest noise and have to check on your baby before you’re able to fall back asleep.
3. You start to miss the cafeteria salad bar when you’re not at the hospital.
4. You tell the nurses how to care for your baby when you’re inpatient.
5. You spend your days making calls to medical companies to order supplies, to doctors and hospitals to schedule appointments, to pharmacies to refill or set delivery dates for medications, and to insurance companies to negotiate and argue.
6. Your pharmacists know you and your child by name.
7. Your idea of getting out of the house means a trip to the grocery store or to a doctors appointment.
8. You treat yourself to Starbucks every time you leave the house because you have to reward your efforts of packing up the baby, diaper bag, oxygen tank, monitors, emergency medical supplies, feeding supplies, and cleaning supplies.
9. You avoid social situations because you’re afraid of germs.
10. If your child is sick, you go straight to the ER instead of the pediatrician.
11. Your hands are constantly dry and cracked because you wash them every five minutes.
12. When the baby is fussy, you always wonder if it’s “normal” baby fussiness or if something is medically wrong.
13. Your brain is constantly on high alert so you’re always mentally exhausted; it’s like pregnancy brain on steroids.
14. You worry if people are upset with you for not letting them kiss your baby or for not bringing your baby around them often.
15. You have multiple bags packed in case of an emergency trip to the hospital.
16. Your in-home therapists have become your friends because they’re the only adult interaction you get most weeks.
17. You live day to day and don’t plan too far ahead.
18. You have a routine and you stick to it.
19. You know way too much medical jargon and basically have a nursing degree without the years of schooling.
20. You get over-excited about every bit of progress your child makes.
21. You refuse to fully commit to anything in advance.
22. Your Facebook feed is full of stories and questions from other parents of medically fragile children similar to yours.
23. The hospital feels like your home away from home and you see people you know when you walk through the hallways.
24. Your guest bedroom closets are all full of medical supplies, and you find so much joy in organizing it.
25. Your child’s bedroom looks like a mini ICU.
26. Your new hobby is finding creative ways to deal with your child’s different medical complications.
27. You have your own mini pharmacy in your kitchen.
28. You consider a night with no machines alarming at you a huge win.
29. When you get told all the time how special you are, but you don’t feel special, you just feel like a mom.
30. Your medically fragile child constantly teaches you what strength looks like.
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