"It seemed like staff wanted me to essentially leave the twins alone, not to touch them, not to bother them." Paul's story

When my twins were admitted to the NICU in May 2015, I was an Air Traffic Controller in the Royal Air Force.

It felt to me like there was a societal expectation that now you were a dad you would immediately start parenting, but in reality, I was not. Nothing fundamentally changed for me while they were in the NICU. It felt like I was visiting a relative that was in hospital after work. It did not seem like it was my children, over which I had any control, authority, decision making, or power.  

For me, NICU was very much about the mum and the children and anyone else is sort of surplus to requirement that staff would tolerate on occasion. If I went in to see the twins after work in the evening, it felt like I was an inconvenience. It was made quite clear to me that the twins needed rest, they did not need bothering by their dad of an evening. 

It seemed like staff wanted me to essentially leave the twins alone, not to touch them, not to bother them. Sort of sit and observe them like they are an artefact in a museum – but please don’t try and interact with them. There were a couple of nurses that were quite proactive and told me “No, no, you need to be more involved”. However, I found I would go in on a Tuesday, one of those nurses would be on and encourage me to get them out to do something, but then I'd go back in on the Wednesday and be reprimanded for doing the same thing.

Having never had children that were born at the ‘right time’, I had nothing to compare to. You are looking at something that is so small, so fragile, that you are paranoid that anything you do is going to break them. To have a medical professional come in and reinforce the negative thoughts was not helpful.

Even after we got them home, there was certain stuff where Rachel would say what I needed to do with the twins and I felt as though I could not do that type of thing. So, it took us a while to adapt even after we even got them home due to my lack of ‘hands on’ whilst in NICU.

Partly because of what I do for a living, I am very used to compartmentalising everything into boxes. For example, when I am deployed overseas, I am used to focusing for two hours supporting someone that is fighting a war. And then I take a 10-minute stroll down the road, and we are having a coffee. And then an hour later, I go back to it. That sort of chopping and changing between things is something I am relatively used to. So, when the twins were in NICU, at the time it felt fine to operate like that.

I was fortunate with the timing from when the twins arrived, as whilst my primary role is considered safety critical, I was fortunate to be instructing when Rachel had the twins, there was not the same pressure as some military colleagues feel with new arrivals.

For people serving in the military, for obvious reasons, we run a very hierarchical rules-based system. It meant that whilst I could understand more than some people could in terms of how a hierarchy might work in the hospital in terms of where the different medical professionals sat, it also meant that from my perspective, anyone in an NHS uniform that was telling me something that I must follow, the military perspective is that they're not trying to give me help and guidance. They are giving me…pick your acronym… rules, orders, or SOPs. This is what happens, so this is what you do. If the instruction from the nurse was, you do not disturb your children, that was not a little bit of helpful guidance. That was a rule to be followed.  

With people in the military who are very used to following rules, having neonatal staff explain why something was an issue one night but acceptable the next, would have been helpful. In hindsight I would push for more information on these differences if I were in the same position again.  

The military has changed significantly in the last 10 years since the twins were born, in a comparable way to how the medical profession has. But I think I would be encouraging others in the military to feel confident in presenting appropriate challenge. There was a way we could have produced more of a family plan, a pragmatic family conversation, where a balance of all daily activity could have been better understood. 
 

One of the issues for me was that I could only visit alone. If my dad had met me there to go in for an hour, that might have made a difference to how welcoming it felt. Not that I would have necessarily had a different interaction with the twins, but there would have been a natural conversation with my dad about what was going on which would have allowed me to voice out loud what I was thinking.  At the time there was no real opportunity to voice some of those things that were going on as Rachel was highly stressed with everything that was going on.  

It was especially drilled into us through the nurses, that I was absolutely not to do anything that might in any way, shape or form give Rachel any doubts over what was going on. It was made very clear to me that if I was to let Rachel know that I'm not really very happy with what's going on here because it's not really working, that that would be a huge negative for both her and the twins.  

Looking back now I am in a position responsible for subordinates, there is more support for military personnel than I was previously aware of. I would advise other military families to reach out and speak to your chain of command and the various welfare structures available both on unit and within military charities if needed.

Both service personnel and line managers should now be more aware of the range of mental health, welfare and financial support available depending on or your circumstances. The demands of neonatal care are not always understood, or even that it exists at all, but there is support available to allow you to prioritise on what is most important.