NICU visitation
We can't possibly convey how much all of your love support means to us and how it continues to lift us up. Norah has an incredible amount of people – friends, family and prayer warriors – surrounding her and praying for her; this girl is so, SO loved.
With all of that love has come a lot of questions about visitation once Norah arrives.
Knowing that Norah could be in the NICU for anywhere from 3 weeks to over 4 months, we thought we should explain how things will work after she's born (as far as we know right now, because, as we are all aware, when it comes to Norah, change is not only possible, but likely).
To begin – click here to view the Children's Hospital Neonatal official visitor policy for this flu season.
We have two rules when it comes to visitation:
1: Please, always check with us first. Immediately after birth, we won't have any NICU visitors until Norah is stable, and we simply don't know how long that may take – it could be hours or days. If you come without checking, there is a possibility that you may not be able to see us at all, regardless of how far you travelled. This could be for many reasons, none of which have anything to do with us not wanting to see you: we may have already reached the maximum number of visitors for that day, Norah may be having a procedure done, or we may simply need time to catch up on sleep.
2. Please, if you feel off in any way, shape or form, call or Facetime us, but do not come. If you have been around people who have been actively sick, do not come. If you do come and you make it through the security health screen but we see you have a runny nose or cough, we will likely ask you to leave.
These sweet little NICU babies are hypersensitive to the germs of life, so we have to be extremely cautious when it comes to visitors, and even more so during this flu season. We're being overly cautious not only for Norah, but out of respect for all the other little angels fighting for their lives on that floor; bugs that could cause a little cold in a healthy adult could be life-threatening in the NICU. Norah needs to be able to use all of her fierce strength to become healthy enough to come home, not to fight off a fully preventable illness.
Not only do we want to be careful about exposing Norah to extra germs, Lane and I are going to be hypervigilant about who we surround ourselves with as well, as we don't want to become germ transportation :)
Please respect that we have created these rules to protect Norah. Understand that they in no way mean that we don't love you, don't want to see you or hear from you, or don't appreciate all of the continued care and support.
We are fully aware that Norah is so loved already and many of you are as excited to love on her as we are. We will try our hardest to post updates, likely having small, daily updates on the Hello, Norah Facebook page or on Instagram (follow along now if you haven't already!). In depth updates on the blog will happen hopefully at least once a week.
We don't know exactly what to expect once Norah arrives.
But we do know that it will be beautiful, perfect, and exactly as it was meant to be.
Thank you all for understanding.
XOXO – Lane, Joanna, and Norah.
