‘If I help a father, I have done my job’

A group of fathers whose babies were cared for in Hull’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are offering a helping hand to other men in the same situation. BBC News comes to meet him.

“The noise, the lights and everything just sticks with you,” says John, a father of three and founding member of the support group Humber Dads.

“When I was driving home one night, I was laying in bed and all I could hear were their voices and it was just this sheer, constant worry of, ‘Is he going to be OK?’

John’s son, Ralphie, was born nine weeks early after dire warnings from his partner’s medical team.

He recalls: “The doctor basically said that your baby must be born tomorrow, otherwise there is a good chance of stillbirth.”

Ralphie was delivered by emergency cesarean section, weighing only 3 pounds 6 ounces (1.5 kg).

Four years after his family’s ordeal, it is clear that John is still haunted by the experience.

Yet she and others who have had similar difficulties return to the unit within Hull Royal Infirmary every week to support others.

John explains, “I want them to feel like they’re not alone, that there’s someone to talk to, someone who understands.”

“If I can make a difference for one father, I’ve done my part.”

However, while not criticizing the standard of care, John points out that fathers in the unit can feel isolated and unable to share their feelings during what is often a highly traumatic period.

During Ralphie’s five weeks, the NICU staff would tell him and his partner to go home for rest.

For a moment, John was transported back to 2020.

“We’ll get home and we’ll get a call saying he’s having trouble breathing and his lips have turned purple and to come back quickly,” he says.

“Then we’re quickly putting our clothes back on and in the car and driving like crazy back to the hospital, wondering if he’ll be alive when we get there?”

Ralphie is now a happy little boy, whom John describes as “full of beans, a little whirlwind around the house”.

His experience spending time in the NICU inspired him to team up with two other fathers to set up a peer support group to help other men going through the same experience.

The Humber Dads group was born, and now members take turns visiting the NICU every Monday evening.

We follow John on his tours.

He meets Graeme, whose son Faolin was born full-term, but has already spent a month in the NICU due to medical complications.

For Graeme, being able to talk to someone who knows what he’s going through is a huge relief.

He says, “When things seem bleak, knowing that other people have been through it makes you feel like there are ways out.”

“Knowing that you’re not the only person fighting something like this makes it a little bit easier.”

John describes people like Graeme as his “brothers among brothers” and says there is “nothing better” than being able to help people who find themselves in the same boat as he did.

He says: “Anyone can talk to their best friend, or mom, or dad, or brother or sister, but they don’t know what the experience will be like unless they’ve actually gone through it themselves.

“I want them to feel mentally strong. Fathers can be forgotten.”

John goes to the high dependency room of the unit next door, where he shakes hands with Rob of Scunthorpe. Their twin daughters, Grace and Lily, were not born until March, but were born in December, one weighing 2 pounds 2 ounces (1 kilogram), the other only one ounce.

Rob says that when the girls were born they were so small that he was afraid to hold them, but talking to John helped him a lot.

He says: “When you come to the NICU, everyone’s thinking about mom, and making sure they’re OK. It’s great, it’s needed, but then you feel a little different, so It’s nice and reassuring to know there are people like Humber Dads out there.”

NICU clinical psychologist, Rachel Foxwell, admits the unit can be a “really difficult, isolating and lonely place” for parents, but says the Humber Dads volunteers make a “really big difference”. There are, especially when men can be “ignored”.

She says: “Fathers can often think that they need to be strong and that they need to be brave to take care of the mother, to take care of the child and they often don’t give themselves the space to think that emotionally. What’s it like for them.”

Although John says most conversations with fathers in the unit start with the babies, they often move on to topics such as football and rugby, giving fathers a much-needed break from the mental stress of having a sick or premature baby. Gets it.

He says: “Every father I go to, they open up. I’ve talked to fathers who are very upset and then half an hour later, they’re laughing and joking with me over a cup of tea in the kitchen. Are doing.

“It’s a talking point for me. If I can go out there and make a difference for one father, then I’ve done my job.”