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Welcome to The NICU Translated Podcast, where we break down the complex world of the NICU into clear, relatable insights for families and the professionals who support them. Hosted by Mary Farrelly—a certified NICU nurse, doula, and educator—this podcast is your go-to resource for navigating the NICU with confidence and compassion.
Whether you’re a doula looking to better support NICU families, a healthcare professional seeking deeper understanding, or a parent preparing for or living through a NICU journey, you’ll find actionable tips, evidence-based guidance, and heartfelt stories to inspire and empower you.
Each week, we’ll explore topics like:
-NICU 101: Terms, diagnoses, and medical equipment explained.
-Preemie care basics and developmental milestones.
-How to advocate for your NICU baby with confidence.
-Emotional and trauma-informed support for NICU families.
-Insights from NICU professionals and families who’ve been there.
With episodes featuring expert advice, list-style guides, and real-life interviews, The NICU Translated Podcast is here to equip you with the tools and knowledge to make the NICU journey less overwhelming and more empowering.
Subscribe now and join our community dedicated to bringing more joy and less trauma to the NICU experience—because the NICU is only the beginning.
Let’s navigate this journey together.
Mary Farrelly (00:00)
Some people are called to the edges of life, the places where beginnings and endings happen. My guest today, Amanda Newstetter, has spent her entire career at those thresholds.
Amanda began her life's work as a social worker during the HIV AIDS epidemic, supporting individuals and families in moments of unimaginable loss. Years later, she became a NICU parent herself when her daughter Vita spent a month in the NICU in 1995. And today she's a postpartum NICU doula, blending decades of experience with a deep desire to help families feel supported, seen, and held. In this episode, Amanda shares her story with honesty, wisdom, and heart, from the trauma of her birth experience to the healing she found in postpartum work. Whether you've lived through the NICU, support those who
have, this conversation will meet you right where you are.
Mary Farrelly (01:18)
Hi everybody and welcome back to this week's episode of the NICU Translated Podcast. I'm so excited to have Amanda here today. Welcome Amanda.
Amanda Newstetter (01:26)
Hi, so happy to be here.
Mary Farrelly (01:29)
So Amanda, tell us a little bit about your story, who you are and your journey to meeting us and having this NICU Dula journey together.
Amanda Newstetter (01:39)
Okay, so let's see, I am a lesbian mom, grandma, live in San Francisco with my partner of 40 years, Donna, and I have ⁓ two daughters, 46 and 30. My 30 year old was my NICU graduate, and I come to this.
First of all, because my daughter was in the NICU for a month with ⁓ a condition called high drops. So a lot of times babies are in the NICU because they're preemie. She was not exactly a preemie. She was almost 37 weeks, but she was really sick with high drops, which basically means swollen up with water. She was, ⁓ let's see, was ⁓ in denial about my water breaking early and things happened.
pretty quickly and we weren't sure I kept thinking, water didn't really break. yes it did. Okay, now we're on the way to the hospital. We weren't prepared, you know, it's a month early, it's the middle of the night, labor's starting and ⁓ because it was a little early, later on they did a sonogram, they saw something on the sonogram, they did a bigger sonogram and
I remember very distinctly six or seven men walking into our room and saying, your baby is very sick. She has something called high drops. She has a 50 50 chance of survival. We're going to try and keep her inside for a while and get her lungs healthy and then have a C-section hopefully in a few days. And I was just like, whoa. my God.
Totally freaked out, sobbing, turned to Donna and said, my God, we're gonna name her Vita. And I thought, cause Vita, know how you have lists of names and I thought, you know what, she needs a name that's gonna give her ⁓ good energy. My partner's Italian. I thought that's, and I just, you know, lost it. ⁓ Got an infection a few hours later, so we didn't wait a few days. ⁓
They tried to stop my labor, two different drugs, and now I know that was Vita and they're going, no, no, no, get me out of here. So, ⁓ emergency C-section that night, it was Donna's birthday. So that was kind of a powerful piece. ⁓ so, emergency C-section, 11 o'clock at night, a bunch of my friends were there and, ⁓ you know, it was wild.
Mary Farrelly (04:02)
you
So she was born and is now in the NICU. Do you remember a bit about your first experience after giving birth through an emergency C-section? That is such an intense experience to begin with. But your first experiences going into the NICU and seeing your daughter and what did that feel like for you?
Amanda Newstetter (04:43)
I forgot to say that she was nine pounds almost six weeks early because she was swollen up with fluid. The first time I remember being terrified the next morning, I'd had a C-section. You're kind of a wreck. Hormonally, emotionally, the whole thing is like, what the hell? Why am I here? And I was terrified to go meet her thinking, okay, I'm going to go meet my baby and then she's going to die. And
It was, you know, so frightening really to go see her. And she had all the tubes and you know, she just looked so vulnerable and you know, you could barely see her body. There were so many tubes and tapes and things on her. And it was really sad, but I immediately bonded and felt like, my God, this is my baby. So.
you know, was that combination of terror and love combined.
Mary Farrelly (05:47)
Right, that like true duality of I am so scared and I am so grateful that you're here. It's like that, that split emotions in the same second that is so common in the NICU journey and in really any intense, grief-filled moment in people's lives, those transformations, those moments where key, key memories are being made, having two things be true at the same time. How...
Amanda Newstetter (05:56)
Yes.
Mary Farrelly (06:16)
Did Vita's journey in the NICU go? How did you navigate your own postpartum healing and experience while also navigating Vita's very critically ill beginning?
Amanda Newstetter (06:29)
It's interesting for me, unlike probably a lot of the people you're going to have on here who have more recent experiences, this is 30 years ago. So ⁓ there's a lot that's kind of a blur. I remember
Mary Farrelly (06:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (06:44)
just moments of just terror sitting at the bedside watching them do things to her. It took me a little while and I think this is true for most NICU families. It takes a while to acclimate to the NICU and sort of learn what your role is in there, how to be a parent when you have this whole beautiful team taking care of your baby. And you kind of don't know how to fit in.
Mary Farrelly (07:00)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (07:13)
It
took me a while to navigate all that. My way of coping, besides crying a lot and having a lot of ⁓ friends show up, I mean, this is pre-internet, pre-cell phone. So ⁓ it was a different time in terms of communication and how to stay connected to my community. ⁓ I do remember one of my main coping.
Mary Farrelly (07:29)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (07:41)
mechanisms was to kind of compulsive because I'm a social worker and I connect pretty easily to all kinds of people. I connected to the staff. was sort of compulsively connected to the NICU nurses. I feel like you all are an amazing group of humans. It's just hands down. So I felt like if they connected to me, they're going to take better care of my baby.
Mary Farrelly (08:11)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (08:11)
So I
pretty quickly got in with the different nurses and figured out who I really could connect with, who I felt like was really on top of things with Vita
Mary Farrelly (08:24)
There's so many, as you said, like unless you've been in the NICU, the relationships that you form in the NICU are very real. Like the nurses, as a nursing perspective, like I really deeply connect with the families that I'm caring for. And families are really, they're very real, very true relationships. It is, I feel like in different parts of healthcare, you can build a relationship with a family and it's important to build rapport. But I feel like the NICU is so unique because
there is two patients really that you're taking care of. You as a nurse, you have your baby and then you have the family as an entity too. having those real connections and real relationships are so essential to be able to get through that NICU experience. And you mentioned also that your background is in social work and ⁓ tell us a little bit about...
your professional experience and how that maybe either impacted your care that you had in the NICU and then how you kind of navigated your journey beyond NICU as well.
Amanda Newstetter (09:30)
So my career was, I was a social worker and later a trainer in the HIV AIDS epidemic. Got in very early, started in 1984 in San Francisco at the AIDS Foundation. All my clients died. I was 28 years old, second job, same thing, everybody died. So I'd had a lot of death and dying experience. When she was born, I had
I've become more of a trainer and was a little out of the direct service. ⁓ I will say that I didn't realize it until she was born and we had this NICU experience that I had felt like I had spiritually rigged this birth. I had gone through so much death. I felt compelled to give birth and I thought, how could this be happening to me? How could my baby die? She was...
kind of life and death for the first 13 days. So we didn't really know what was gonna happen. And I just talked to God every day, like, my God, how could you, how could this be? I I've done so much service. I've been in the death and dying trenches. Really? You're gonna have my baby die too? So ⁓ I did a lot of reckoning in those early, early weeks. ⁓
Mary Farrelly (10:42)
Thank
Amanda Newstetter (10:56)
trying to make sense. ⁓ But, you know, I would live day by day. I had a lot of support and, you know, you go one day at a time. I do remember a turning point. So we're in San Francisco, we're on the 15th floor of UCSF and there's an earthquake. We are sitting down to the family conference to check in about how Vita is doing.
Mary Farrelly (11:16)
you
Amanda Newstetter (11:22)
And I'm thinking this could go either way. We sit down and there's an earthquake literally. And I just like, okay, that's it. She's going to die. We're all going to die. mean, it was just this really terrifying moment. In fact, that was a moment that was a turning point. And they said, she's, she's, she's doing really well. You're going to go home in a couple of weeks and you can now start breastfeeding. And it was like a, woo. my God moment. So.
Mary Farrelly (11:40)
you
Amanda Newstetter (11:52)
But you're just so braced for the worst. And you're seeing hard things happen all around you when you're in the NICU. ⁓ There was a support group, but it was every Tuesday. when you're in the NICU, it feels like every day is at least 10 years. So that wasn't enough support for me. I wanted a support group three times a day.
Mary Farrelly (12:14)
Thank
at the bedside with you, right? You need it. That earthquake is, that's such, I just read a book called Signs, and it was kind of about signs from the universe, and I feel like the earthquake's such a, we use them.
Amanda Newstetter (12:22)
I just felt like, yeah, this is just too much to navigate alone, you know, when you're not expecting.
Mary Farrelly (12:40)
roller coaster is a metaphor for the NICU all the time. But the earthquake is also, I feel like a really powerful one, that you are as the parent or as the baby, as the family, in the middle of this room that feels like it's just literally moving around you all the time and you can't get your bearings and you can't figure out where you are and you don't know when it's gonna stop and you don't know whether it's going to be a little earthquake or a big earthquake or a catastrophic earthquake that's gonna change my entire life. It's all that constant.
unknown and sometimes like an earthquake literally comes out of nowhere. Like you just simply were living your life and all of a sudden now this is your next chapter, your new journey and you didn't have any time to prepare or process while you're living it. So I think that is the timing of that is just so
incredible like hearing that story and listening to that too. So now Vita is doing better and we're getting closer to going home. So let's talk a little bit about your days leading up to your NICU discharge and maybe even those first days home. What did that experience feel like for you?
Amanda Newstetter (13:44)
you know, I remember being really excited and really nervous and we had some stops and starts, which I think is really common. You're going to go home tomorrow and then tomorrow comes and you're not going home because ABC. ⁓ So a little bit of stops and starts. So you're trying to brace yourself for disappointment, but also gear up for the excitement and the reality of taking your baby home. So I, what I remember
Mary Farrelly (14:06)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (14:12)
⁓
is we took her right from the hospital to a restaurant and had lunch with her. in retrospect, I wish somebody at the NICU had said to me, you know what, your baby's been through a lot. She needs probably a month or two of just quiet and chill and not too much stimulation. And you know, we did the opposite and God love Vita. She just would fall asleep.
Mary Farrelly (14:37)
you
Amanda Newstetter (14:40)
you know, when she got overwhelmed. that was, you know, an adaptive little mechanism for her. But, ⁓ going home, we lived 45 minutes away. So I will say one of the things that's really hard and traumatic is to go home without your baby. So we stayed at the hospital for a week. She was there for a month. ⁓ the social worker actually said to me,
I'm concerned that you're still here at the hospital. Why are you still here at a week? And I was just like, oh my God, really? I have a baby in the NICU who I'm trying to stay really connected to. Anyway, so she kind of kicked us out. did not have, ironically, being a social worker. And maybe that was because I was a social worker. She did not know what to do with us. And so, and, and maybe she was thinking that there are better ways to say it, you know, that we want you to
you know, go home and have a little bit of your life at home and start that transition and gear up for her to come home. ⁓ but that's not how she presented it anyway. Going home without your baby is just excruciating. So when we got to bring her home, unbeknownst to us, all of our neighbors, we lived 45 minutes south of San Francisco in a beautiful wooded community. and our neighbors had made a humongous sign.
that they put outside the door saying, welcome home, Vita. Which is just like, ⁓ this is so beautiful. ⁓ What I remember is being feeling pretty isolated. My partner Donna had to go back to work. was a, you know, so attorney, so had her own business. So I think she was able to stay off for a month. Of course, we'd already used one of those months while Vita was in the NICU. So I remember being
terrified and just like, here I am isolated in the woods ⁓ with my baby who I hope is going to be okay. ⁓ You know, I learned five years later, I got a job ⁓ teaching as a NICU parent at Stanford with this team that went around and talked about developmentally supportive care with premature and sick babies. And ⁓
In that process, I learned so much about all of the cues that a baby will give when they are stressed out. my God, I had missed so many of those cues. know, Donna, there's a picture of Vita with her feet. I thought it was so cute. She had this really cute blue jean dress that my sister had given us and her feet are so splayed out and she just... Anyway, there's so many little stress signals and...
Mary Farrelly (17:09)
you
Amanda Newstetter (17:33)
you know, exhaustion signals that, that I missed that I wish I had known about. So, ⁓ but the woman I did all those trainings with, she would say to me, you know what, Amanda, your love supersedes all of it. Your love and intention supersedes all of the mistakes you made. And that was a beautiful thing to hear because you, know, as any parent, any new parent, you're, know, it's, I'm sorry, you're just learning as you go. You don't know what the hell you're doing.
Mary Farrelly (18:03)
them.
Amanda Newstetter (18:04)
And, you know, same thing with being a NICU parent, but you feel like the stakes are higher. And so it's just really great for me to hear that. And now as a postpartum doula, I always tell families, you know, if it's good for you, it's good for your baby. And if, you know, they're going to feel the love and intention and that's going to override any mistakes you're going to make because you're going to make mistakes. So.
Mary Farrelly (18:27)
Yeah,
feel like babies give us so much more grace than we ever give ourselves and children and other people, mostly in the world. We are our own harshest critics and build up these expectations for what we should be doing, could be doing that sometimes that doesn't allow us to see like the joy in the beauty.
Amanda Newstetter (18:39)
guess.
Mary Farrelly (18:51)
that we are offering in the moment and that we are having those points of connection, because babies are wired for love. They're wired for love. And if you can give them love, then you're doing the best that you possibly can do. you said it so eloquently that NICU families, especially the stakes feel higher because you know the alternative. You know what your baby went through. You know what you went through. Some of your fears that you have as a parent, as a new parent in general,
Amanda Newstetter (19:00)
Absolutely.
Mary Farrelly (19:21)
are very abstract if you've never seen it. as a NICU parent, sometimes you've lived your worst nightmare. That has actually happened. it sets this undertone of fear and overwhelm. And then to add a traumatic birth on top of that can be really, really tricky to navigate. And also then having the isolation of being
what did you kind of touch on this a little bit? What did your post-NICU mental health journey look like?
experiences did you have and what impact did that have on your first year with your daughter at home?
Amanda Newstetter (21:24)
So I had the privilege of taking off, I believe it was five months. to be honest, I think I was just in survival mode and, you know, just as any like new parent. ⁓ my mental health was okay. I went back to work in, it was March. And I'd say my mental health sort of fell apart the following June or July.
when I realized my baby's okay, she's gonna live. She might have some issues, but she's gonna live. And it's safe to feel all my feelings now. So the sadness and the grief and sort of overwhelm was really, really intense. And it didn't last for a long time and I sought out help. So. ⁓
Mary Farrelly (22:17)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (22:19)
I saw a therapist and I actually have ⁓ a spiritual teacher who I've done a lot of Tarot study with, Pamela, and she helped me think through. She said, you're gonna be a teacher. She used Tarot cards. She pulled the death, I think the birth and death card together. She said, you're gonna be a teacher. You're drawn to thresholds.
this is what you're going to be doing. You're going to be teaching about this. And of course at the time I'm like, what, are you kidding me? So anyway, that all came to pass. Cause I got that job at Stanford a few, few years later. And you know, I did do a lot of work on myself to do that job, I told Vita story every time we had a training. So I had to
Mary Farrelly (23:00)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (23:16)
make sure that I was going to be okay with that and not be sobbing in front of a group of foster parents and nurses telling her story. So I did therapy, did EMDR therapy ⁓ for a couple months before I took that job because I felt like there's so much trauma in there. How do you process that? We also took Vita to
We learned that trauma, if you don't deal with it before the baby is three years old, will go kind of nonverbal. So we took her to a woman who I met at a conference. So I was at a conference for the Association for Pre and Perinatal Health folks. ⁓ I met a woman who did work with babies on birth trauma.
And we took her to this woman when she was not quite, I'd say, two, two and a half-ish. And the power of that was just amazing. This woman had a room that was set up like a birth canal, basically. It's all beautiful pink colors, and she's playing heartbeat as you walk in the room. And there's tunnels, and there's pillows, and there's a huge thing of sand tray toys.
And if you don't think your baby experiences trauma, can tell you we were blown away because early on, Vita, you know, she was not a kid that you'd look at and go, whoa, she's traumatized. Not at all. Very subtle. But when she got to that Sand Tray, ⁓ there's like a huge bookcase of little San Trey toys. She would find the one animal and she'd say, where's mom? Where's the mom?
and she'd pull it out. And so we did this tunnel work where she would come down the tunnel and I would hold her and we'd do this really intense eye contact. You know, mom is right here. But also one day she, she picked up this little doll that had like stocking placenta on it. She unsnapped it and she went to the sand tray cabinet and she pulled off a, a ⁓ syringe.
not a syringe, like a syringe no needle. And she took the baby, she put the syringe in the baby's mouth, she said, okay baby, you can breathe now.
Mary Farrelly (25:56)
now.
Amanda Newstetter (25:58)
And we were all like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I do recommend to folks, I just wanna say that out loud because I think sometimes you're so, you know, in your own trauma mode and coping and just trying to take care of your family that you don't think about, is there anything I can do for my baby before, that might be helpful in terms of trauma. We later took Vita when she was 13.
to an osteopath who specialized in birth trauma and that was amazing too. Vita laid down on this table and the osteopath later told us, she said, oh my God, I can feel her birth in her body so incredibly. She's 13. Vita to this day, she's now 30, she says that that was the most relaxed she's ever been. So just to know that there are concrete things you can do.
Mary Farrelly (26:49)
Wow.
Amanda Newstetter (26:54)
to help babies who have been through traumatic birth experiences.
Mary Farrelly (26:58)
That is so incredible. And I feel like intuitively and instinctively as parents, we kind of know that we have this like inner knowing that it impacted us so deeply to have a more intense, dramatic or truly traumatic experience around pregnancy, birth and postpartum. And we know that our baby was there too. And this also kind of loosely links into a little bit the
like pain theory that we used to have in neonatology, like for a long time, it was assumed that neonates and especially preemies did not feel pain. Like they did not feel it. Their bodies were so immature and wired in a way that they could not feel pain, which we know is so very wrong. But they do feel pain differently. Their neuro pathways are different. They're immature. there's a balance between that. So they are making these memories and these core feelings and they're living this experience.
but they don't have the same processing to build like a ⁓ memory like we have, right? Like, you know, like we have a very clear visual memory oftentimes of these events that are happening, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen to them, that the experience didn't exist and it didn't imprint in some way. So I think that that is fascinating, especially that moment with the syringe, like that implies that she had a memory of being intubated, right? Of like seeing that a...
Amanda Newstetter (28:10)
Right, right.
Yes.
Right? Yes.
Mary Farrelly (28:23)
in your mouth is what helps you breathe. And as a baby, you know, you're not going to have the words and you just have these visuals and these imprints and these memories. So I think that when you were talking about this and if you're a family listening, know that I feel like there's always a layer of guilt and shame intertwined with this. Like what could I have done differently? What did I do wrong? What choice did I make? All these like what I could have showed us again that we do not give ourselves grace for.
So what words do you have if families are listening to this and thinking maybe they have an older child that wasn't able to do this type of birth processing work? What insight or advice or words do you have for families that are still navigating this, whether they're in the trenches and are just coming home or they're listening to this and they're further out from their NICU journey like yourself?
Amanda Newstetter (29:11)
Well, first of all, I did forget to mention how much shame I had after Vita was born. Just that I was 39, I knew I was having one baby, and I thought, my God, I screwed it up. Here's my one chance, and I screwed it up. And I didn't expect how deep the shame would be. But I really, remember being, I didn't want to call my sister. My sister's seven years older.
had two, what I call, yoga births, where at the height of labor you're going, hmm, and I didn't want to call her. I felt so ashamed, I didn't want to call her. So, yes, all the shame, all the stuff. I think most people, I felt like I was really lucky, and I think because I was in a world of social workers and people who cared deeply about mental health, I learned about this, but I agree with you. Most people don't.
Mary Farrelly (29:45)
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Newstetter (30:07)
hear about this. if you're listening and your child is 18, what I would say is it's never too late. Vita's 30. She's doing all this work now because she's gearing up to have her own babies. And she's, her whole life we've talked about, oh yeah, she had birth trauma, blah, blah, blah. And it's a big joke in our family. Oh yeah, it's a birth trauma. But actually Vita's now done enough work that she realized, oh yeah, there is really some parts.
Mary Farrelly (30:07)
Mm-hmm.
Thank
Amanda Newstetter (30:35)
of me and how I am that are probably related to my birth. So she's actually doing her own deep work. So I would just say, don't feel shame, don't feel bad, don't, you you can still do some kind of work with your child. There are people, you know, just seek out ⁓ folks who know about birth trauma and don't feel bad.
Mary Farrelly (30:51)
Thank you.
Mm-hmm
Yeah, I
think.
Amanda Newstetter (31:02)
done
a great job. You're a great parent. Whatever you've done, you're listening to this podcast. So yeah.
Mary Farrelly (31:07)
Right.
feel like everyone
in every moment, you're doing the best that you can with the resources that you have in that moment. Like that is all when we look back on things and are reflecting, that's the grace to give. Like you're doing the best that you can with the resources that you have, whether it's not like you as a, like theoretical you as a bereaved, intense.
traumatized parent yourself, it's going to be really hard to then identify and help your child to navigate that too. So you're even sharing, like you did your, started your own work processing it before you were able to help and identify Vita as well. And I feel like our culture, Western culture in general, sometimes around the NICU and post-partum in general is this idea that like, get back at it. Like, ⁓ sorry that happened to you. Now move on, keep going.
ignore that, move on. the concept of the body keeping the score, you can only move so far unless you've processed things or have started to do work around it before it will find you. It will find you. It sounds creepy. But it will come out in different ways, whether it's from weird physical symptoms that you have or ways you interact in relationships, it's there.
Amanda Newstetter (32:06)
Yes.
Yes, it will leak out. Yes.
Mary Farrelly (32:28)
I ⁓ always emphasize, especially for NICU families, but really any person, really any person, but especially postpartum people to prioritize your own physical health. Yes, but mental health, especially my, my own story is similar in that my, with my second daughter, my postpartum depression did not happen right after birth. It happened after the transition to work when things were supposed to be back to normal. And that's when everything kind of just felt like it was falling apart. And
After having talked, told many people in my life to go seek therapy, I had never done it myself and I did it and I still regularly attend therapy and I cannot, I don't think that NICU translator would, I know the NICU translator as it is today would not exist without both the pain and the darkness of that experience and then the time that I've spent in the last two and a half years, three years trying to explore and
take care of myself and get to know myself too and my own lived experience and how that is impacting how I did show up and how I do want to interact and continue to grow and evolve in personal and professional life too. So I feel like, especially with NICU families, there is pain. Like we're never going to take away the pain of the experience. Even as NICU dualists now we know that having better support and having better education
will help mitigate a lot of that and control the pieces that we can, but you are never going to completely erase the fact that the NICU is by definition, sometimes very traumatic for families, many families involved, but having people that can walk alongside you and having a plan for how do we process this and navigate this after will make the overall trajectory feel better too. let's talk a little bit, one of the...
the words that you said that I kind of want to explore too is the concept of thresholds and how you're really called to serving people at different thresholds. So let's talk a little bit about what that means to you and what work you do in this space around thresholds.
Amanda Newstetter (34:27)
Yes.
Well, one thing I'm in the threshold choir. For those of you don't know, there's 150 choirs around the world that sing to people who are dying. But I also ⁓ sang for eight months in the NICU to a baby who died. So ⁓ I've been in that choir for 20 years. And now, so my first career was a lot about death and dying and health. And I ⁓ retired in 2021.
And two months later, was having a conversation with ⁓ my partner and my daughters, and we were talking about, what career would you have had if you didn't do the one you did? And I was the last one to go, and I said, I would have been a midwife. And the three of them just jumped up and screamed, and that was sort of the beginning of my, ⁓ huh, maybe I should pursue this. And so I sought out, ⁓ I did a birth doula class. ⁓
here in San Francisco, realized I'm too old to be up all night. I don't want to be, I love birth, but ⁓ postpartum was calling me. Then I did a postpartum certification program here. And then I found Mary, cause I've always felt like, okay, what I want to do is postpartum, but I really want to support NICU families. And then, ⁓
Mary started showing up on my Instagram and I thought, my God, NICU Doula Academy, are you kidding me? My prayers have been answered. So ⁓ that was just a complete gift and very inspiring. now, mean, my hope is ⁓ I've been a postpartum doula for the last ⁓ year and I'm pursuing that, but now wanting to...
work more closely with NICU families and also help the local doula community learn more about the NICU and feel more comfortable. So it's not only about being there and supporting, ⁓ NICU families both during and after their stay, but also I am hoping to help the doula community shift. Cause at the moment, nobody talks about the NICU.
Mary Farrelly (37:02)
Thank
Amanda Newstetter (37:02)
you know,
you go to a childbirth class and maybe if you have some high risk thing going on in your pregnancy, you might hear about the NICU. But no, you know, I didn't know anything about the NICU. And I do think had I known that 10 % of births end up in the NICU, maybe I wouldn't have felt the same shame. So I'm hoping to change doula culture, maybe, you know, run some support groups or
classes for people who have had NICU births and need a little extra support process time to process the birth experience. So ⁓ yeah, I'm super excited about it. How I've taken kind of all my life experience and come to this moment as a postpartum post NICU doula. I couldn't be more excited.
Mary Farrelly (37:44)
Yeah, you're it.
Mm-hmm.
Good.
You're so uniquely and perfectly positioned to step into this work between your lived experience and your professional experience and your career as a social worker and your now experience as a doula too. Like the families that and doulas that are going to connect with you are in for a real treat. your way that you share and you speak and you just eloquently get it. You just get it. And I am so excited.
that you are part of the inaugural cohort, the beta cohort of NICU Doula Academy and seeing how you're going to be able to step into this work and just shift the whole culture around NICU because that's really the work that NICU Duelists can do is both individual, our individual impact on families and the shift that we can make for their unique experience. But then we talk about it in the
Amanda Newstetter (38:30)
Thank you.
Mary Farrelly (38:55)
class all the time, the ripple effect that that leads. Like you support one family and you change one family's trajectory, that's going to impact how that baby develops and then how they interact with their world and their community. And then also shifting just the overall narrative of like, what does the NICU mean in the postpartum experience, the postpartum journey? Because right now, as you said, like most people treat it as a like ostrich in the sand. We need to know. But when you do need to know, you should have known.
months ago. Like you can't learn in an intense traumatic way and be fully prepared. So having shifting doula culture because duals are such a trusted source of birth and postpartum education for so many families. So if we can shift and integrate NICU informed care at the frontline of those that are boots on the ground connecting and offering that practical and emotional support with families, we're going to just see an incredible shift overall with
how NICU families feel about their NICU experience and what it means and how it plays out in the rest of their life. So how can people, if they're looking to connect with you, how can people get in touch with you, Amanda, and bathe in your light?
Amanda Newstetter (40:11)
My email is amanda at ppdoula.com and I have a website that's ppdula.com so that's probably the easiest way.
Mary Farrelly (40:24)
and you are in, you're in San Francisco area still, correct?
Amanda Newstetter (40:28)
Yes, some in the Bay Area. Yep. So.
Mary Farrelly (40:30)
Do you do any virtual work as well right
now or mostly in person?
Amanda Newstetter (40:35)
I'm happy to do virtual work, but mostly I've been doing it in person. I'm more of an in-person person, but I'm happy. I am flexible.
Mary Farrelly (40:38)
It's really fun.
to connect in every way. Well, I'm just so grateful for having you on the show. And as a wrap up, I have one final question for you. So if for the parent that's still in the thick of it right now, they're managing trauma, uncertainty, overwhelm, what is one thing that you would want them to know about healing and what comes next?
Amanda Newstetter (41:07)
Healing and what comes next. Trust yourself. I think that's a huge piece that's hard to do in the thick of the NICU. But as you get acclimated and you sort of learn some of the terminology and you have your connections with the staff and you understand the machinery and your baby's condition, that sort of thing.
It's easier each day. It's a little bit easier to think about your own needs, but ⁓ trusting yourself that you are that you are your baby's, you know, best caregiver and you need to be at the head of that. You're not a medical person probably, but you need to be very integrated into your baby's medical care and part of the team. So to just trust that, ⁓ you know, you're going to
Get through this and ⁓ stay connected to yourself as best you can through it. Find the support you need, both during the NICU experience, but after. I would say most people, if not all folks who have been through the NICU, at least for a couple weeks or a few months, you're gonna need extra support. You're gonna need time and resources to process.
Mary Farrelly (42:12)
Okay.
Amanda Newstetter (42:29)
So take that seriously for yourself. And your love for your baby, you you're gonna make mistakes and love, love, I hate to say the word trumps, but love trumps all. ⁓ So just trust yourself. Yeah.
Mary Farrelly (42:44)
Love clunkers, all.
I love that. one of the things that we say is that the NICU is only the beginning. It is chapter one. It is a really intense chapter and it will always be part of your story and your baby's story. But it is, it is chapter one and there's so many more nights together, moments of connection, moments of pure love. And there's so much to look forward to, so much joy to come. So thank you so much for being with me today, Amanda. I'm so lucky to have you in my life.
Amanda Newstetter (43:13)
Absolutely.
Thank you for having
me.
Mary Farrelly (43:20)
and I can't wait to connect further. Talk soon!
Amanda Newstetter (43:25)
Thank you.