Maybe They Should Make These Calls in the Afternoon

In the NICU, no news is good news -- they'll call us if something bad happens, but otherwise, they wait for us to call them (which we usually do first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, and sometimes in the middle of the day).

We were awakened this morning by a phone call from UNC, and the person on the other end of the line introduced herself as So-and-so, a NICU case manager. That evoked instant terror. "Are the babies okay?" was the first thing I said -- and then she clarified that the babies were fine, and that in fact she was not one of the medical staff but a social worker. Whew. (I think it took about an hour before my adrenaline levels were back to normal after that.)

I never expected to be someone who had a social worker assigned to me! It turns out that they contact all NICU families in the first week, and can connect people with resources (for instance, if we didn't have reliable transportation to the hospital). However, she primarily works with people when they're getting ready to take the babies home, which will be quite a while for us. So she had a lot of questions like whether we had carseats (no), a place for the babies to sleep (yes), a pediatrician (no), and so on. In the end, it was kind of encouraging to at least think about taking them home. And even though we don't need all of the services, I'm continually impressed with all the things the UNC hospital does to support parents and families.