Hannah Lacy with a copy of her book. Photo: supplied.
Hannah Lacy started her nursing career thinking she’d never be confident enough to put a nasogastric tube in a neonate but after six months it ‘became like bread and butter’. As overwhelmed as she had originally felt, she knew that fear and confusion must be ten times greater for families of the infants in the special care nursery. Hannah wanted to help. So she wrote a book.
Frankie & Lenny in the Special Care Nursery is a picture book, written and illustrated by Hannah, that aims to help siblings of unwell children understand the machines and noises and other scary things they’ll encounter as their new family member is being cared for.
‘I’d never written a book before,’ Hannah tells ANMF (Vic Branch). ‘But I’ve always been a bit of a creative person. I love drawing, creating, writing poetry.’
After graduating in 2024, Hannah’s first rotation was in the special care nursery at University Hospital Geelong. It was a fantastic introduction to her nursing career, she says, and it ignited her passion for neonatal care. But it was also incredibly overwhelming.
‘You don’t really study neonates at uni, so it was lots to learn.’
‘My first rotation being in special care nursery was amazing, I would argue life changing. It was pivotal in my career choice.’
One day, one of the mums told Hannah that she had been looking for a book for her baby’s siblings to help explain what was happening. But all she could find were some American NICU books on Amazon.
‘I thought about it a bit, and then realised I could have a crack at it. It didn’t have to be perfect but I could write a book for the Geelong nursery.’
And so, Hannah sat down and wrote. ‘I knew I wanted to talk about an isolette, and nasogastric feeding, and phototherapy, because they’re the most common things I saw throughout my rotation in the nursery. I also wanted to talk about the volume of speaking in the nursery and the little sign they have at Geelong. I don’t know if other hospitals have that but hopefully it’ll be relatable to other hospitals.’
After coming up with a rough draft, she started drawing. When she had something book shaped, she sent it to a family friend who had a child in the special care nursery in Canberra. They found it helpful, and Hannah knew she was onto something.
The cover of Frankie & Lenny in the Special Care Nursery.
Wilderness first aid, paramedicine and nursing
Hannah had just finished her grad year when she spoke with ANMF about her book, and was looking forward to a postgrad role in the Royal Women’s Hospital NICU. But her nursing career almost didn’t happen.
‘After I finished high school, I went into outdoor education,’ she says. She did a course and worked for a while in the snow, and with school groups. As part of her course, she had to complete a wilderness first aid unit.
‘It’s a three-day first aid course, and I just loved it,’ she says. ‘It was run by paramedics and we got a fairly decent chunk into the pathophysiology of things. Obviously, it was a drop in the water compared to uni, but it got me interested in healthcare.’
Her interest consolidated in 2020 when Covid hit, and the following year she enrolled in the dual degree in nursing and paramedicine.
‘I’m from Anglesea on the Surf Coast, and I moved up to Ballarat for uni. It was really, really difficult at the start: I found it really isolating being in a new town where I didn’t know anyone, going in and out of lockdowns. It was really tricky to build friendships.’
As difficult as it was to study under these extraordinary circumstances, Hannah remains grateful – ‘as much as I hate to admit it now, it did make us more resilient’ – and she ultimately was able to make some very good friends.
‘My goal is to learn the skills and earn the knowledge to be a really solid, confident, reassuring nurse. I’d like to be for someone else what those nurses were for me.’
She is also grateful to have studied the dual degree. ‘Initially, because I’d come into it from an outdoorsy background with all these notions of going and saving the day [in the wild], I thought I’d be more focused on paramedicine. But as I studied my degree it swapped and I became much more interested in nursing. Very much so.’
For Hannah, her paramedicine knowledge helps her feel a bit more confident in her nursing – and her nursing knowledge and experience helps her to feel more confident when she volunteers with Ambulance Victoria. ‘So many skills cross over and help my confidence in both,’ she says.
But having discovered how much she loves nursing, she’s in it for the long haul. ‘My first rotation being in special care nursery was amazing, I would argue life changing,’ she explains. ‘It was pivotal in my career choice and I feel very lucky to have had such a great experience that’s made me so passionate about neonatal care, and to want to follow that wherever it goes.
‘I also feel lucky to be in a career where there’s so many areas you can go into. That’s really exciting but it’s daunting right now imagining my career five or ten years down the track, when I’ve only got a year and a bit experience.’
An illustration from Frankie & Lenny in the Special Care Nursery
Duck calm on top, paddling like crazy underwater
Depending on what experience she gains, Hannah is open to writing another book.
‘It would have to come from my own experience again,’ she says. For example, Frankie & Lenny has a happy ending because Hannah had less experience during her rotation with infant loss and more difficult presentations.
‘I did find one other local book about the NICU journey, My Brother Otto by Ingrid Laguna, which is about a baby that does pass in the end. But the main thing for me is that I would need to have the personal experience. I thought about mentioning umbilical access or intubation in Frankie & Lenny, for example, but I didn’t have the knowledge yet so I didn’t feel comfortable writing about it.’
In the meantime, Hannah is focused on learning all she can in order to become the best nurse she can be.
‘I remember early on in the special care nursery, one of the babies was very unwell. The monitors were going off, people were rushing around. I was really stressed. But seeing how the experienced nurses operated with such an outward sense of control – even if they were stressed too – it really helped.
‘I want to be the person that walks in the room and has a reassuring presence; to be duck calm on top, even if I’m paddling like crazy underwater. My goal is to learn the skills and earn the knowledge to be a really solid, confident, reassuring nurse. I’d like to be for someone else what those nurses were for me.’
