Introduction to the NICU Dads’ Group
Bo Wheeler, who’s a pilot, came home late from a work trip on Dec. 10, 2023. He remembers sleeping late the next day, waking up to watch the Bears beat the Detroit Lions. That’s when things took a bad turn for him and his wife Roz, who were expecting twins.
That evening, the discomfort Roz Skozen Wheeler had been feeling turned into pain. They called her OB-GYN and headed to Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital. It was 28 weeks into her pregnancy, 12 weeks before her due date.
Her doctors tried but were unable to delay labor to give the twin babies’ lungs more time to develop.
So Roz and Bo Wheeler were about to become parents much sooner than expected.
Bo Wheeler describes the births of twins Max and Vivi this way: “You’re in this crazy situation that is like a car crash. You didn’t expect to be here. You didn’t wake up thinking that this was going to happen this morning. And now you’re thrust into it.”
The twins were born by emergency C-section — Max, weighing 2 pounds, then his sister Vivi at 2 pounds, 4 ounces.
Besides the health of the tiny babies, the doctors were worried about Roz Wheeler. She had preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication. They needed to get her blood pressure under control.
After the delivery, Wheeler could only look on as his wife and babies were whisked away for treatment.
“Everyone you know and love is in a very precarious situation, and it’s on you to kind of keep it together,” he says. “You don’t have anyone to share that with because they’re all in a much worse state. So you can’t complain.”
A Rare Program to Help Fathers
When people think about pregnancy and the joys and excitement that come with it, they don’t expect their child to end up in a neonatal intensive-care unit, as Max and Vivi did.
When that happens, doctors’ focus understandably is on the newborns and the mother. They rarely have been trained in even how to talk with the non-birthing parent who, of course, also is experiencing trauma.
Dr. Craig Garfield, a pediatrics professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who’s on staff at Lurie Children’s Hospital, and Dr. Cameron Boyd, a third-year NICU fellow at Northwestern, have seen the stress, anxiety, even depression and post-traumatic stress disorder some of those parents experience.
They say many fathers feel they have to hide their feelings, reasoning that who are they to complain, they weren’t the ones to give birth.
Garfield and Boyd are trying to change that. That’s why they run the NICU Dads’ Group, which, at a recent meeting at Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital, includes fathers whose newborns are in intensive care and “alum dads” like Mike Swain, who has four children, three who were NICU babies. They’re now older and doing great. But he’s there to talk about his experiences and offer advice.
“I had a lot of dark nights, not knowing where to go, and I had nobody to talk to,” Swain tells the new dads, urging them to “make some friends in this unwanted fraternity that you’ve joined.”
The men listen as other dads tell their stories. Most look worried and tired.
Brandon O’Connor is the first of them to speak up. He is a therapist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He and his wife Hayley Grines have been at the NICU for 16 days. Their twins Sonny and Felix were born at 31 weeks. Felix was 2 pounds at birth. Sonny was 3 pounds. They were placed on ventilators and were unable to eat on their own.
O’Connor has just found out Sonny had bleeding in his brain. The doctors and nurses talked with him about the medical procedures and treatment he would need.
“I’m trying to be the supportive person rather than the one sort of freaking out about everything, navigating all the people who are checking in on updates on our kids,” O’Connor is saying. “Also trying not to put that burden on my wife, who’s doing her own processing of everything.”
<img class="Image" alt="A photo that Brandon O’Connor posted in his "Sonny & Felix NICU Updates" blog that he used to keep family and friends informed. He wrote with this photo "Major update: Felix just woke up and played with us for what feels like the first time. He was responding to our voices and playing with our fingers and smiling. We melted, obviously. He was being so incredibly cute and interactive. Pictures can’t do it justice, but here’s an attempt."" srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/221a056/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1392×1244+0+0/resize/840×751!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fa6%2F31%2Fd3d600364fb9a80b89a6f8de8d83%2Fscreenshot-2025-06-12-at-10-54-58-am.png 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e0c7991/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1392×1244+0+0/resize/1680×1502!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fa6%2F31%2Fd3d600364fb9a80b89a6f8de8d83%2Fscreenshot-2025-06-12-at-10-54-58-am.png 2x" width="840" height="751" src="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/221a056/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1392×1244+0+0/resize/840×751!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fa6%2F31%2Fd3d600364fb9a80b89a6f8de8d83%2Fscreenshot-2025-06-12-at-10-54-58-am.png" data-lazy-load="true" bad-src="data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSI3NTFweCIgd2lkdGg9Ijg0MHB4Ij48L3N2Zz4=">
