Helping Children Process Medical Trauma Through Play with Mary Jenner

Having a baby in the NICU can be an incredibly frightening experience, and for some parents, the emotional impact continues long after they leave the hospital. In this episode, I speak to Dr. Sophie Tolmie, a psychologist and NICU parent, about her experience of having her son Luca born just before 31 weeks and spending seven weeks in neonatal care. Sophie shares her very honest experience of developing postnatal OCD following her NICU experience, including intrusive thoughts, contamination fears, compulsive hand washing, checking and the overwhelming fear that she could somehow harm her baby. She also talks about the role of trauma, therapy, EMDR, medication and gradual exposure in her recovery, as well as what she wants other parents experiencing OCD to know.

Baby loss can change everything. In this episode, Lucy Livesey, founder of Ellie’s Gift, shares the story of losing her baby daughter Ellie following a 20-week scan, and the experience of navigating grief, pregnancy after loss and life as a parent to both a baby who died and her living children. Lucy also talks openly about her experience of termination for medical reasons (TFMR), the gaps she found in support for families experiencing baby loss, and how she turned her own experience into something that could help others. This led her to create Ellie’s Gift, an app and support resource designed to help people navigate grief and life after baby loss.

In this episode, I'm joined by neonatal clinical psychologist Rebecca Chilvers, who shares her expertise on the psychological impact of neonatal care and why a NICU stay can affect parents long after they've left the hospital. We explore the many emotional experiences that can arise during neonatal care, from trauma and grief to guilt, anxiety and feeling disconnected from yourself.

In this episode, I’m joined by Annemarie Lodder from Imperial College London and three young adults who were born premature and spent time in neonatal care: Anais, Nicholas and Stella. Together, we explore what it is really like to grow up after premature birth and what young people wish their parents, healthcare professionals and the wider public understood about their experiences.

In this episode, I’m joined by Jessica Lowther-Payne, a non-birthing mum in a two-mum family, to talk honestly about her experience of becoming a parent after a challenging IVF journey and unexpectedly finding herself in neonatal care. Jess shares the compound impact of IVF, grief and trauma followed by an intense NICU and PICU experience, and how this affected her mental health, identity and confidence as a parent. We also explore the unique challenges non-birthing parents and LGBTQ+ families can face in neonatal care, from feeling invisible or excluded to struggling to access appropriate perinatal mental health support. Jess shares what she has learnt about bonding and trauma since leaving NICU, as well as the work she is now doing to advocate for more inclusive and compassionate support for all families.