If you are getting ready to bring your baby home from the NICU or you have a child who has complex medical needs, this episode is for you! Being a parent is difficult, but when you have a sick child or one that requires extensive medical care, therapies, and appointments, it can dramatically change your life and that of your family. Today we continue to spotlight some of the difficulties, stresses, and struggles of parents who have children with complex medical needs.

We discuss the importance of parents working with a professional therapist to work through their grief and trauma. We review how crucial self-care is but discuss the need for it to be adaptable to your family’s lifestyle and to recognize that “chronically ill children have chronically stressed parents.” Tune in to listen as my guest, Alissa MacDonald bravely shares personal experience, knowledge, and advice as a mother of a child with complex medical needs.

Alissa and her husband Matt became foster parents and they ultimately adopted Tegan, a former 24 weeker who spent months in the NICU. And sadly, since his discharge from the NICU, he has been ridden with multiple complications, several life threatening scares, PICU admissions, and debilitating diagnoses including but not limited to reactive airway, cerebral palsy and autism.

We discuss the importance of finding a therapist and how they can help you cope and work through your trauma. Alissa identifies ways that parents of chronically ill children can participate in adaptable self care and she speaks to the importance of finding the right support group or community that fulfills you. We also discuss how difficult it can be when your significant other processes trauma and stress differently than you. But most importantly, we share that as a parent of a child with complex medical needs that it’s simply okay to say, that you’re not okay. 

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