‘Teen Mom’ star Kailyn Lowry opens up about living through the NICU with her twins

“Teen Mom” star Kailyn Lowry is no stranger to sharing her life and the struggles she’s had with parenting (and relationships) with the world. This time, in the latest episode from her podcast Barely Famous, she shares another inside look into what life is like for a mother of multiple children, sharing her experience with not only having twins, but twins who also had to be admitted to the NICU right after they were born. She has seven children now, and during the twins’ NICU stay, she was only able to bring one of them home, which caused even more stress in an already stressful situation. And as she shared in the podcast, the anxiety never left, even with both babies home safe and sound.

Like any of us, Kailyn talked about how scary it was and the feeling of helplessness we all feel when our brand new babies don’t get to come home with us right away. Walking out of the hospital no longer pregnant, but “empty handed” because your child(ren) are still at the hospital and dealing with medical issues is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Lowry and her boyfriend Elijah Scott shared their experience with their twins’ premature birth last fall.

She said her twins were born five weeks early and they couldn’t even hold the babies for the first 24 hours of their life. She lamented that the babies were there for weeks, not just a couple of days, but there were other families whose babies were in the NICU even longer than their twins were. She said that while her twins were there for a long time, some babies were there “for months and months.”

Lowry said in the podcast, “I cried a lot. I probably cried more with the NICU journey than the c-section stuff.”

Both babies were in the NICU, but “Baby A” was released faster than “Baby B” and that made the situation more emotionally and logistically complicated.

“It was an hour drive there and back and when I was there, I was there for hours,” Lowry said.

Scott said, “We had to travel back and forth, at least once a day, one of us.” And the couple had five other kids at home to take care of. Once Baby A was released, there were six—and obviously, the logistics of that is a nightmare. If you add in the fact that the twins weren’t together, that creates even more anxiety, because Lowry was worried about the babies’ bond.

“She was away from her twin—we were away from her. When we were home, we still couldn’t process it because there was so much going on here. Lincoln still had his basketball games and practices. Isaac still had his after school stuff. Lux still had what he was doing,” Lowry said in the podcast.

She said, “I think that there’s a big difference between the twins in terms of, because she was in the NICU by herself for so long, for so many weeks, and he was home, she’s more okay by herself. Whereas we were home with him and someone was always with him, holding him and all of that. Now that she’s home, I feel like my bonding experience has been so much better.”

Since Baby B was away from her family and her twin, Lowry said she tried to make the NICU as homey as possible for her while she was alone in the NICU.

“I printed out pictures for the NICU wall because I didn’t know how long we’d be there and I wanted to make sure that it felt homey … I just didn’t want her to be alone,” she said.

Now that Baby A is home, Lowry shared that she’s “trying to remagnetize them to get them back to where they were” because of her worry about the separation of the babies “putting a strain” on their bond.

Even now that everyone’s home, the anxiety you feel after living through the experience of having a baby in the NICU doesn’t leave you.

“I still don’t even know if we’ve processed it,” Lowry said.  “I don’t think I’ve processed it to this day. We went to the pediatrician yesterday, and I’m still very much concerned about so many things.”

Lowry says now that everyone is together, “I feel grateful, thankful, fulfilled, happy, and complete. We’re putting an addition on our house because of this. I feel so blessed. They are good babies.”