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Friends waiting at the NICU door
The medevac
Mel Robbins' son Oakley was five days old when he was medevaced to Mass General Brigham in Boston. The doctors at the suburban hospital had told his parents to pack their bags because they did not know if he would make it. The family went home, packed, and reached the hospital around 11 at night.
Friends at the door
Her friends Robin and Lisa were standing at the NICU door. They had both had babies in the NICU before and knew how hard it was. Nobody yet knew whether Oakley was alive. He made it.
The memory twenty-one years later
Twenty-one years later, she returns to that night when she feels lonely or discouraged, even though she sees Robin and Lisa less than she would love to. A psychologist's question is the next step with a memory like this: what is an important thought or feeling it gives you? For her, the answer was that she is not alone, that she can get through hard things, and that she wants to be the kind of person who shows up in those moments.
Why are some newborns flown to bigger hospitals?
The American Academy of Pediatrics classifies newborn care units in levels. Smaller community hospitals typically provide basic newborn care or care for slightly early babies, while higher-level units add neonatal specialists, advanced breathing support, and pediatric surgery. When a baby needs more than the local unit offers, a transport team brings intensive care into an ambulance or helicopter and carries the baby to a regional center. Level IV units, the highest, can repair serious congenital problems surgically and are usually found in large referral hospitals.
Why do some memories stay so vivid for decades?
Emotionally charged events are remembered more vividly because the amygdala boosts the storage of memories in the hippocampus. James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine, spent decades showing that stress hormones released during an event strengthen its memory. In 1977 psychologists Roger Brown and James Kulik coined the term flashbulb memory for vivid recollections of shocking events. Later studies found that such memories feel sharp even when some of their details change over time.
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