"This is my amygdala speaking. Please leave a message, and I will get back to you as soon as I can."
My mom knew it was my trauma speaking. She knew, if I'm being honest, far before I did, that I was experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety. And often, my reactions seemed misaligned with the situation at hand. That's because my body was telling me I was fighting for my life.
After the premature birth of my son, his very survival DID depend on things being quite controlled. He was in a medical facility with sanitation protocols in place to protect the very medically vulnerable patients who resided there. Handwashing became so routine your skin begins to crack. Being in public or around others came with risks that usually didn't outweigh the benefits. Even driving felt scary — as a new mom who had been inducted into parenthood through trauma, with the knowledge that this fragile creature I loved so much was mortal and therefore susceptible to the sometimes unpredictable and unkind acts of the universe. It was almost too much to bear.
So when my mom wiped the baby's face — to clean up milk or drool — with the cloth I used for layering on the changing pad surface, I snapped at her abruptly. "THIS cloth is for his face. That cloth is only for butts." The cloth was clean. It didn't really matter. But I had my systems, my routines. Much of it had to do with minimizing the chaos and mess of newborn life. If you've parented a newborn, you know what I mean — the dishes, the bottles, the clothes, the endless loads of laundry. If there are ways to keep the usable clean things clean longer, it may mean one fewer load. Clean bottles go here. Freshly pumped milk goes here. Don't mess with the system.
But it was also something deeper. Bacteria, contamination, threats visible and invisible — they felt like they could loom anywhere. Because they had. The worry, the protectiveness, the need for control: all of it was amplified like a loudspeaker in my brain, because my sole charge was keeping him alive. With a full-term baby, the tenuousness of that role just doesn't ring as loudly in your ear.
So she learned the systems. I like onesies folded like this. These towels are for changing pads, these ones are burp cloths. (Only a slight variation in size and texture, but they had different uses). Pumped milk lives here, but can only stay out for four hours before being fed. Used bottles on the left of the sink. Washed bottles on the right. Fortified milk is mixed in the fridge, but needs to be labelled. No feeding from a fortified bottle after more than an hour. She respected my practices as though they were law. And bless her. Those days would have been infinitely harder without her.
But then one day she was asking me about groceries she'd like to buy for us. Those times were challenging financially as well as logistically, and her help was a welcome gift. But when she got to green beans — French green beans or cut green beans — it was as if she had asked me how I'd like the splinters inserted under my fingernail beds. I couldn't bear the questions. I wanted the help. But in her overeagerness to get it right, the help wasn't helpful. I didn't have the bandwidth to care, much less to explain what kind of green beans I wanted. After all, the job at hand here in this house is keeping people ALIVE. I'd rather have no green beans than have to think about what kind of green beans. She kindly and acceptingly moved on.
Looking back, I realize first of all that my mom was a saint. But also that there was a rhyme and reason to the things I wanted all the control over — and the things I didn't want to have to think about at all. And most of it comes down to safety. This is where a little nervous system science comes in handy.
Here's the short version, and I promise it's worth it.
Your brain has layers. The part most people associate with thinking — reasoning, planning, deciding what kind of green beans to buy — lives in the prefrontal cortex, sometimes called the "thinking brain." It handles nuance, weighs options, makes sense of the future. Then there's an older, faster part deeper in the brain — including the amygdala I cheekily referenced up top — that is wired purely for survival. It doesn't think. It reacts. Its entire job is to scan your environment, assess for threats, and mobilize your body to respond. Fast.
When it detects danger, it sends a memo to the rest of your nervous system: _tiger_. And when that happens, the thinking brain gets demoted. Blood, energy, and attention all shift toward survival. Your heart rate climbs. Your senses sharpen. Your body is ready to run or fight or freeze. This is the stress response — and it is genuinely magnificent when there's an actual emergency.
The problem is, it wasn't designed for a prolonged emergency. It was designed for a tiger that eventually goes away. After the threat passes, your nervous system is supposed to reset — heart rate slows, muscles relax, the thinking brain comes back online.
But after a traumatic birth or a NICU stay, the tiger doesn't really leave. You're not having one scary moment — you're living inside an ongoing one. Your nervous system stays in a kind of low-grade alert, scanning constantly, ready to mobilize. And that is exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't felt it.
So when my mom wiped the baby's face with the wrong towel, it wasn't just about the towel. My body had already decided: threat. Tiger. The thinking brain didn't get a vote.
But the green beans? That did not register as a safety threat. In fact, it was so far outside tiger territory that I was overwhelmed — and even slightly offended — by the burden of having to use my important tiger-fighting energy for something so trivial. It would be like being asked, while escaping a burning building, to stop and select paint colors.
In reality, there was no burning building. There were no tigers. But my body didn't know the difference.
And my poor mom didn't know what was going on. She just knew that sometimes tiny details mattered to me immensely — and other times I'd get irritable for even being asked to think about something.
So what would it look like to have a cheat sheet? Every experience is different, and every family finds its own way. But some patterns hold — and naming them out loud can help. If you're the one supporting a preemie parent, this is a place to start. And if you're the one living it: sometimes the hardest part isn't the struggle itself, it's finding the words to tell people how to show up for you. Consider this a starting place for that conversation too.
Possible tiger zone: anything related to the baby's care — let the parent lead.
This is where I needed full control, and for good reason. I was the one at all the appointments, asking questions, getting answers from medical providers, combing through online parent support groups, doing web research at 2am. I was holding most of the practical knowledge: where the feeding tube supplies were, where the extra can of formula lived, when it was time to reorder diapers. The systems I built weren't arbitrary — they were the infrastructure keeping my baby safe and my brain from completely unraveling. Having everyone in the household consistently implement those systems wasn't about control for its own sake. It was about making sure nothing fell through the cracks, and making sure I didn't have to spend energy correcting things that had gone sideways. If you're supporting a preemie parent, ask them once what the system is — and then honor it, even when it seems overly precise. Especially then.
Tiger free zone: anything not related to safety or survival — initiative is welcome.
Groceries are a perfect example. So is folding laundry, bringing in the mail, running errands, keeping the kitchen functional. Maintaining any sense of sanity during that season meant giving those things as little of my time and emotional energy as possible. If you have the ability to do something without asking, just do it. Make decisions. Make things appear. Don't narrate your effort or wait for instructions. And please — only give what you truly have to give, because the preemie parent in your life may not have room to thank you the way you deserve. But they will notice. When they open the cabinet and there's something ready to eat without having to think about it, they will know that was you. And they will be grateful in ways that might not reach the surface until much, much later.
If you love someone in this season — whether they just brought a preemie home, or are still sleeping in a NICU waiting room chair, or are months out and still flinching at things that seem small — here is what I want you to know.
You are not going to be able to fight the tigers for them. I know you want to. But the tigers are inside their nervous system, and no amount of love can reach in and turn that off. What you _can_ do is make the non-tiger things as invisible as possible. Handle the green beans without being asked. Learn the systems, even the ones that feel arbitrary to you. Ask once about what matters most — and then protect it.
When you get it wrong — because you will, and so will I — try not to take it personally. The snap, the silence, the seemingly disproportionate reaction: that is not about you. It is a nervous system doing its job in a situation it was never designed for.
And if you're the one living this — if you recognized yourself somewhere in these pages — I hope this gives you something to hand to the people who love you. You don't have to explain the towels from scratch. You don't have to justify the green beans. Sometimes having the words, even someone else's words, is enough to start the conversation. Your helpers want to help. Let this be the map.
You can't take the hard parts away. But you can make sure they don't face them feeling alone. And that — quiet, consistent, non-performative presence — might be the most powerful thing a village can offer.