Gentle company for NICU motherhood.
Dear NICU Mama pairs personal NICU stories with maternal mental health support, medical-parent reflections, and gentle peer validation. Its episodes move slowly enough for complex trauma, diagnoses, grief, and recovery to feel heard rather than rushed.
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Dear NICU Mama is a warm, emotionally careful podcast for mothers whose stories have been shaped by intensive neonatal care. It treats the NICU as both a medical setting and a lifelong emotional landmark. Episodes often begin with a personal timeline, moving from pregnancy or early warning signs into the moment when everything changed. Severe preeclampsia, high blood pressure, growth restriction, c-section delivery, medical flights, and long bedside stretches all appear through lived stories rather than abstract advice. The show makes space for the bewildering parts. A parent may feel physically fine while monitors say otherwise. Another may return to work because dissociation is the only available way to keep moving. The conversations hold those contradictions without shame. Mental health is a recurring center, especially the delayed processing that can arrive near a due date, after discharge, or much later. The roundtables widen the frame by letting multiple mothers compare language, diagnoses, coping patterns, and the weight of being seen. Community call-ins give the show a collective pulse, with parents sending encouragement from the middle of their own NICU days. There is also practical care here. Episodes discuss maternal mental health resources, NICU doula support, collaboration with medical teams, and the importance of postpartum needs at the bedside. The medical-parenthood episodes reach into grief and joy at the same time, especially when families are living with serious diagnoses or uncertain futures. The show is soft in its delivery, but not shallow. It knows that encouragement can sit beside tears, and that hope does not erase trauma. Listeners looking for polished distance may find it too intimate. NICU parents looking for language, witness, and company are more likely to feel its value quickly.
Made for: For NICU mothers, former NICU parents, and medical parents who want emotionally honest stories without clinical distance. It also fits loved ones trying to better understand the fear, grief, recovery, and tenderness around NICU life.
What sets it apart: The show blends peer support, maternal mental health framing, and detailed birth and diagnosis stories in a tone that feels protective rather than performative. Its strongest episodes make room for messy processing, not just polished survival narratives.
The DNM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by NICU mamas and team members of Dear NICU Mama, Ashley + Aisha! By hosting interviews with trauma-informed medical and maternal mental health experts and sharing vulnerable interviews with NICU mamas around the world, our hope is that you feel like you’re sitting across the table from another NICU sister and feel seen and validated in your experience. No matter where you are on your healing journey, this podcast is here to remind you that you are not alone. Welcome to the sisterhood! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Dear NICU Mama pairs candid family stories with careful conversations about trauma, recovery, diagnosis, and life after neonatal intensive care.
Ashley and Aisha make complicated NICU experiences legible through personal interviews and roundtable conversations. Parents describe premature delivery, uncertain diagnoses, medical decision-making, and the strange forms of coping that can emerge during a crisis.
NICU fear gets a chair beside joy here, and neither is asked to tidy itself up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A compassionate roundtable frames dissociation after a NICU stay and points NICU mothers toward support.
Mental health after a NICU stay is treated as something lived in motion, not solved by a neat script. Ashley introduces a replay from season eight, and the roundtable settles into one mother's story of returning to work while her baby was still in the NICU.
Katie reflects on preeclampsia, uncertainty, and the early delivery of her daughter Annie.
Katie's story begins in the uneasy space of a pregnancy shaped by preeclampsia. She recalls labs being drawn almost three times a day, watching the numbers for signs of relief, and reaching a Monday when she needed to know when her baby would arrive.
A grounded look at how NICU doulas can support families and medical teams at the bedside.
Mary frames NICU doula support as practical bedside care: the kind that helps families feel steadier while medical teams stay centered on the baby's clinical needs.
A gentle, honest conversation about carrying grief and hope together in NICU and medical parenthood.
This Dear NICU Mama conversation works because it lets grief and hope sit side by side without trying to tidy either one up. The speakers speak plainly about fear, confusion, exhaustion, and the strain of living with a child who has a fatal disorder, while also holding on to…
A steady, compassionate roundtable that makes a frightening diagnosis feel a little less isolating.
Dear NICU Mama treats a serious medical conversation with a calm, grounded touch. It follows what cerebral palsy can mean for NICU families, the early worries, the COVID-era delay to the MRI, and the moment the imaging made things clearer.
A focused, compassionate look at sex, intimacy, and pelvic floor therapy after NICU.
This episode keeps its focus on healing after NICU and birth trauma, with sex, intimacy, and pelvic floor therapy at the center. It works best when it gets plain about what hurts and treats the body as something worth listening to.
A candid return that keeps hospital waiting and pregnancy uncertainty in clear view.
The episode stays with a fragile stretch of pregnancy where hope is still present, but nothing feels settled. Hospital days, daily ultrasounds, shifting fluid levels, and the real chance of delivery give the conversation its weight, and it lets that uncertainty stand on its own…
Jonquilyn Hill chases one listener question per episode to the experts who can answer it.
Hard conversations, patiently held, with room to laugh.
Care, culture, and the choices shaping Black women's lives.
Root-cause health, explained plainly.
Hope, tested in real conversation.
Inga, a pediatric physiotherapist from the Netherlands, recounts becoming a NICU mother after her son arrived five weeks early.
Molly, whose daughter Athena died 15 days after a 26-week-and-2-day birth, and Latoya, whose daughter Skylar died in 2013 after 10 months in the NICU, share how infant loss awareness month feels to them years later.
Dear NICU Mama's replay episode "Redefining Grief" features Jessica Hotchkiss, a certified child life specialist and certified grief counselor, who says grief is not limited to death-related loss.
Dear NICU Mama’s “Mental Health Roundtable” features hosts Ashley and Aisha with NICU mothers Camille and Alexa discussing trauma, dissociation, anger, intrusive thoughts, therapy, and medication.
Katie, a former 28-week triplet, describes developing severe preeclampsia at 25 weeks and being transferred by ambulance to Philadelphia for the remainder of her pregnancy.
Mary Farrelly, a level-four NICU nurse and professionally trained doula with more than 13 years in both fields, explains how NICU doula support bridges clinical care and family-centered advocacy.
Hosts Ashley and Aisha introduce the podcast as a safe space for NICU moms, share a lighthearted tangent, and prepare to interview a NICU mama about her story.
Dear NICU Mama welcomes a guest conversation about medical parenthood and the weight of NICU life.
Dear NICU Mama hosts a roundtable discussion about cerebral palsy as a spectrum diagnosis, featuring NICU Alumni founder Drea Hickson, NICU advocate Vilma, nurse practitioner and NICU mom Melissa, and host Aisha.
Hosts Ashley and Aisha interview a NICU mother about her journey, offering validation and support for other NICU mamas.
Hosts Ashley and Aisha introduce a Mama's Calling episode, inviting NICU moms to share their stories, and announce the Celebrate Courage 2026 event.
Jill Ehrmantraut of Apex Therapy returns to talk about pelvic floor therapy, trauma, and sex after NICU and birth trauma.
Hosts Ashley and Aisha introduce the Dear NICU Mama podcast, a safe space for NICU mothers to share stories and expert advice on healing from the NICU experience.
This episode shares audio from a virtual event featuring a guest speaker on birth trauma, aimed at supporting NICU mothers in their healing journey.
Hosts Ashley and Aisha celebrate a milestone birthday and introduce a podcast dedicated to supporting NICU mothers through expert interviews and shared stories.
A live event introduction to a podcast providing community and trauma-informed support for NICU mothers.
A podcast for NICU mothers offering interviews with trauma-informed experts and personal stories to provide validation and support.
Jamie, an L&D nurse, describes how a 20-week bleeding episode led to overnight monitoring, bed rest, and a maternal-fetal medicine referral.
This episode of the Dear NICU Mama podcast features an interview with Rachell Dumas of Light After Nine, focusing on navigating loss, bonding, and advocacy for NICU mothers.