Today is the last day of HIE Awareness Month.
I thought I’d spend the whole month talking about it—sharing our story, raising awareness, educating.
But I didn’t.
Because even a year later, some of the trauma is still too raw to put into words.
Even with Heidi developing right on track…
Even though you’d never know she had such a scary start.
The truth is, I knew the risks.
As a nurse, I understood that my pain might have meant uterine rupture…
But I didn’t look unstable.
Heidi’s heart rate was fine—except for a couple decels she quickly recovered from.
There was nothing textbook about it. No clear signs.
Should they have rushed me into an emergency c-section?
Maybe.
But if we dropped the threshold too low, how many unnecessary c-sections would that create?
And what new risks would that introduce?
No one in that room failed us.
When Heidi came out silent and was rushed to the NICU, there was a moment where the room was silent. Just me and the sweet lady mopping the floor. The lady that will never know the rest of our story.
The next day, our nurse sat down and cried with us.
Multiple doctors came in during our stay—not to defend themselves, but to say:
“We’ve reviewed it from every angle. We wouldn’t have known either.”
But we didn’t need that reassurance.
Because we trusted them.
And we still do.
Birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
There’s no way to have a risk-free pregnancy.
And the farther I get from that day—now nearly a year ago—the more my heart aches for the providers involved too.
👉The nurse who had to watch her patient’s baby be born, limp and quiet.
👉The doctors who may still wonder, “Should I have made a different call?”
👉The postpartum nurses caring for a new mom in pain—physically and emotionally—who didn’t have her baby in the room.
👉Even the volunteer who wheeled me up to L&D when my water broke… and later saw me leave, crying, empty-handed. (When we finally got to take Heidi home, I looked for her. She wasn’t there.)
So many people in healthcare are briefly touched by our stories—then they’re swept into the next one.
Thanks to HIPAA and high patient loads, most never know the ending.
They hold the heartbreak, but rarely get to see the dancing baby that came after it.
That weight adds up.
And it’s one of the many reasons burnout in healthcare is very real.
So as HIE Awareness Month comes to a close, I’m not just raising awareness for brain injury.
I’m raising awareness for the humans on all sides of this experience.
Because the more we talk about what happens after discharge,
the more we humanize the healers,
the more compassion we can offer—to ourselves, and to each other.
How can we create more space to share stories of life after hospitalization?
Because the story doesn’t end when the hospital bracelet comes off.
Thank you, UC Davis Health.
Mary Jenner, RN, BSN, OCN is the founder of a medical play company called The Butterfly Pig with the mission to make healthcare more child-friendly by empowering kids with unique medical needs through realistic and educational medical Medical Play Tools.
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