My daughter (born 2000) had to go back to the NICU at 3 days old and was in the hospital 10 days. She was hospitalized again at 6 months thanks to RSV. We are only now linking her mental health issues to this trauma. I’m pretty sure she has Complex PTSD. But at the time the prevailing attitude was that babies will not form memories so they wouldn’t be affected. We lost a lot of time to help her. We are obviously doing what we can now with psychiatric help and trauma therapy.

I’m glad this field of study is growing. While it seems obvious now that trauma would stick around, you just genuinely don’t know as a new mother and trust what doctors tell you. I would have done many things differently as a young mom if I had a more trauma informed mindset at the time.