My qualifications? I’m the mom of a preemie. I also read a whole lot during the ordeal, much of which I shared on this board in more-or-less real time. I’m also writing two books on the subject, which may never see the light of day; one is a primer for parents of micropreemies, a sort of survival guide to the NICU from the parents’ point of view, and the other a children’s book (target age - 4-7, I guess) on the emotional and practical impact having a micropreemie sibling might have, with education about “all those wires ‘n’ stuff”.
In the longer term, I plan on becoming a neo-natal intensive care nurse, but I haven’t started my schooling for that yet, so none of these are the answers of a nurse. Yet.
First off: the difference between a preemie and a micropreemie. A preemie is a baby born before 37 weeks gestation - 37 weeks from the mother’s last menstrual period. A micropreemie, to the experts, is one born before 26 weeks and weighing less than 1 3/4 pounds, but lay people often refer to any baby born under 3 pounds or before 29 weeks as a micropreemie. Both have similar health challenges, although obviously things are more uncertain and, generally speaking, more dangerous the earlier and lighter a baby is born.
My daughter was born and thrived at 23 weeks and 6 days, making her one of the luckiest, youngest micropreemies to make it. She weighed 620 grams, or 1 pound 5 ounces at birth. Like all babies, she lost a bit her first week. The smallest I remember her getting was down to about 560 grams, and then she started gaining. She was 12 inches long though - about the length of a Barbie doll.
I am **not **a medical doctor, and I won’t vouch for the accuracy of anything in this thread. I’ll *try *to be accurate, but please don’t take my word as gospel on anything! I’ll try to define unfamiliar terms in Captain Dummy Speak as I go along, but if I miss something, just ask.
So, ask away. Goodness knows I write about my kids enough! I might as well answer the questions y’all actually have!
And please, anyone who has experience with preemies or micropreemies, feel free to add your experiences and knowledge as well. I’ve only done this once, with one baby at one hospital. I’m sure there are lots of things I don’t know about.
I’ll take the first question from the other thread. **IntelSoldier **asks: “What’s Kangaroo care?”
Kangaroo care is a method of skin-to-skin contact used therapeutically for preemies and micropreemies. Studies show that babies who are held in contact with an adult’s skin near their heart and over their lungs show better heart rates, breathing rates and oxygen saturation levels. Kangaroo care means you open your shirt (and I always took off my bra as well) and lay the baby on your chest, then cover the two of you with some blankets to make sure the baby stays warm. Then you just lie back and breathe, or quietly sing or hum or talk to your baby. The idea is to as closely as possible mimic the sensation of being in the uterus, which calms the baby and help it’s neurological system to organize.
Kangarooed babies also tend to gain more weight than their counterparts, and parents report a feeling of greater bonding. For me, it felt like Something I Could Do. Whether or not any objectifiable difference was made, it was something I and my husband could do to help, a very valuable thing emotionally when in such a helpless position. And for our baby at least, her apnea (not breathing) episodes were less frequent when we kangarooed and her oxygen levels were much higher than when she was lying in her isolette (“incubator”), even though she was receiving the same amount of oxygen through her ventilator (“breathing machine”).
There is a baby that may come into Foster Care that was born at 24 weeks. I don’t have all of the details right now; but, I think the baby is up to 4 lbs now while in the hospital; but, is on oxygen, dialysis, a feeding tube and they don’t know for sure, but suspect she’s blind.
I have a potential Foster Parent who is willing to do whatever it takes to help this baby once it is released from the hospital.
It’s my understanding that the baby will have to someday have a kidney transplant.
My god, I did this last summer - for a litter of puppies*. Never occured to me you could do this for a human baby
What advice would you give someone suddely faced with a preemie? What do you wish someone had told you? (I’ve read some of your posts on the subject before, and If I recall correctly, you had some warning prior to the birth that she would be premature?)
*The mother dog had to be taken to the vet in the middle of the process for a c-section. Me and BF where left with two little soking wet newborn german shepperds, trying to keep them warm. Seemed like a reasonable thing at the time.
I remember how glad I was when you reported that your baby was going to come home after all. I’m glad to see, too, that you’re using your experiences so productively.
What I’d like to ask is what are the general long-term health problems a micropremie will be likely to face later in life, compared to a simple premie?
In 1980-81 I worked in the Maricopa County Hospital (Phoenix,Az.) as a stationary engineer. Most of that time I worked the graveyard shift. The main hospital building was 8 stories and we made hourly rounds, checking the HVAC and emergency support systems. We also responded to critical maintenance problems, as there were no maint. personnel on duty from midnight to the day shift. I got into the habit of visiting several places during the night: the roof to look out over the city and watch the planes stacked up for landing at Sky Harbor, the ER as they often had minor maint. problems, the various ICU’s and the burn unit to assure they were at proper temps., a couple of nursing stations that had cute, friendly nurses and the NICU where I would stand, looking throough the glass and wonder how those very tiny babies could possibly be alive. They were all so incredibly small and some of them looked as if they would fit in my hand. The nurses rarely even knew I was there, they were totally consumed w/ taking care of their charges. This was about the time that it was found efficacious to put the preemies on a sheepskin, so most of the incubators were lined w/ a small white sheepskin. Do they still do this?
The NICU is my favorite memory of working there.
I’m so glad to hear that your baby is thriving, WhyNot.
I used to be an NICU RN … it was a very emotional and rewarding time for me
I wrote short stories about some of my experiences … one of them I called “The Touch of a Cool Hand” … about one particular preemie under my care from her first day of life – to her last
she lived 18 months
she never left the nursery
we celebrated her first birthday in the NICU
one night, when we knew she was having multiple system failure - I was working feverishly to keep her alive
“Not on my watch” was my thinking
but she was tired of living, I think, and was slipping away
I was exhausted, and at about 3 AM, I put my head down next to hers on her bed … to rest
and to cry … I was telling her how sorry I was that I could not save her life … and how much I would miss her
and she reached out her little hand , ice cold hand, and she placed it across my cheek — and I felt comforted
and it was not long after her death that I decided to take my career in a different direction
Oh, the poor little lamb! How old is she now? Sometimes high levels of supplemental oxygen can lead to blindness, unfortunately. Or it could be totally unrelated. The good news, I guess, is that blindness doesn’t usually lead to behavioral or cognitive problems later on the way deafness or other common preemie disabilities can.
Not knowing how old she is, it’s hard for me to guess if that’s worrisome or not. Most of them don’t know how to suck for a surprisingly long time - I think Caileigh was near 37 “gestational” weeks before she figured it out. As she gets closer to discharge time, they’ll figure out how best to feed her. Some people finger feed - tape a small plastic tube to their finger and sort of tease it into the baby’s mouth. Sometimes this can elicit a sucking response when a bottle or breast won’t.
3.5 months. She came home 2 weeks before her due date. Once she finally got off the oxygen and stopped with the apnea nonsense, she was discharged. Her greatest struggle was breathing, and that’s still her greatest weakness - every little cold virus seems to turn into bronchiolitis and require a rescue inhaler. When she’s older, it’s very likely that she’ll be diagnosed with asthma, but so far we’re avoiding maintenance therapy. For all the horrible things that could have happened, we were very, very lucky that few did.
She had a very common preemie disease called retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), along with something called Plus Disease. Basically, the blood vessels that nourish the retina grew wonky, and threatened to tear the retina off the back of her eye, which of course would lead to blindness. During the week of her due date, after she’d already come home, we had to bring her back to the hospital for laser surgery to correct the ROP. She had one eye exam a year later and her vision tested as normal. We’re just about due for another check up, so cross your fingers for us.
Rest as much as you can and don’t feel guilty if you can’t be at the hospital every day. It took us a while to get that, and we got a bit snarky and dramatic before we realized we were playing the martyr game. Basically, we couldn’t have asked for better, more qualified “babysitters”, so it made sense to spend time with each other, as well as her. Going out to dinner with your husband while you’re suddenly no longer pregnant but you don’t have your baby next to you is really weird. But it really helped the two of us to reconnect and make sure we were on the same page.
Not really, no. It was an emergency c-section due to an infected placenta. We spent a few hours in the hospital trying to figure out what was wrong, but once they identified the problem, we were given about 10 minutes to decide whether to try a c-section or lose the baby.
Aw…my step-uncle was born prematurely, in a cabin in the middle of the woods in Vermont during a snow storm. His midwife sauteed a huge cast iron skillet full of sliced onions and used that to keep him warm until morning came and the snow stopped! Hey, when it’s that desperate, you do whatever comes into your head, right? (Did the puppies make it?)
Most hospitals have nearly unlimited visiting hours for parents. The only exceptions are during rounds - when doctors are in the room discussing cases, privacy laws mean no one else can be in there - and during the shift change for nurses - again, because they have to tell one another what’s been happening, so because of privacy laws, no one can be in the room. So in a 24 hour period, there were 4 hours I wasn’t allowed in. Other people (grandparents, friends) were allowed in during regular visiting hours, but a maximum of two people at her bedside, and one of them had to be me or my husband. The nurses were pretty flexible about the “visiting hours” though.
Most NICU’s have rooms with many babies in them. Only the very sickest babies have their own nurse, most of the time one nurse will be looking after three or four babies at once. Our room had 8 beds, although they weren’t always full, and 2 or 3 nurses. Since most of the time preemies sleep and grow, this isn’t usually a problem. Once in a while they all decide to act up at once, and occasionally the nurse has to page for help. Since I was there so much and got to know the nurses well, I was trusted to do more than most moms - I was allowed to take her out of her isolette on my own, to start her feedings (although the nurses always placed the tube), to weigh and change her and to “pink her up” when she stopped breathing by slapping the bottoms of her feet or rubbing her back. There were only a few times when I couldn’t rouse her and had to ask the nurse to step in.
With micropreemies, they’re often born with skin so thin that you can see right through it. It looks red because you can see all the capillaries underneath. It’s also very fragile and tears easily. For the first week or two, we weren’t allowed to hold her or stroke her - we could lay a finger on her head or hand and not move it. The nurses put a salve called Aquafor all over her to keep her skin moist and flexible, because she didn’t have working sebaceous glands yet.
Even when I couldn’t touch her, I was there, sitting next to her. Sometimes I’d talk at her, sometimes sing, and sometimes just sit and will her to grow. I was lucky in that I didn’t have a job at that point, so I’d get my son off to school in the morning and spend the whole day at the hospital, get a ride home (I wasn’t allowed to drive for a couple of weeks after the c-section) and meet him coming home from school, help him with homework and make dinner. Then after dinner my husband and I, and sometimes my son, would go back to the hospital for a few hours. The hospital had rooms for breast pumping I could use.
Many of the parents couldn’t make it everyday, or could only stay for an hour or so. I felt sorry for them, so busy trying to run the rest of their lives and having to trust the nurses and the hospital without really knowing what was going on. There was one young couple from out of state - they’d come in from Ohio for a Northwestern football game and she went into preterm labor. So not only did they have to deal with everything I was dealing with, but they both had jobs and a home in Ohio to handle. Their baby was in our NICU for about three weeks before he was stable enough to helicopter to Ohio. It was totally against the rules, but I used to go over to his isolette and coo at him and tell him how much his folks loved him. You’re only supposed to even *look *at your own baby, but I couldn’t stand the thought of him being all alone all week. The nurses very kindly looked the other way, for my sake as much as his, I’m sure.
Much the same, only the risks are greater. Micropreemies have a much higher risk of cranial bleeds, or bleeding in the brain. These can be harmless, or cause brain damage. Cerebral palsy, deafness and blindess are the most common severe long term disabilities, along with learning disabilities, just like for preemies. And, of course, micropreemies are more prone to various lung problems, since they’re born with undeveloped lungs. Lungs don’t develop in air like they do in the liquid uterine environment, even with surfactant drugs to make them slick. Scars in the lungs and bronchial tubes are fairly common, and can compromise lung function for years, or a whole lifetime. Asthma, as common as it is for all kids today, is nearly ubiquitous in micropreemies.
Not a sheepskin per se, but everyone at our hospital had a very nice, and tiny, fleece blanket, double sided, sewn by volunteers. Soft as can be. They also have these bendable 18 inch wires, padded with cotton fluff and in a cotton casing, which can be bent into a U shape and snugged up around the baby. Preemies like to feel snug, and these (no one knew what to call them!) really helped calm the babies down.
Thanks, by the way. One of my favorite people to see was the guy who did the maintenance on the respiratory lines. He was so cheerful, and so positive. He just brightened my night whenever I saw him. I wanted to tell him that he was just as important as the most well-paid doctor there, but I didn’t want to sound condescending. But it just amazed me how many support roles there are in a hospital, and people who never touch a patient still touch a patient’s life.
nipplesup, thank you for all that you did. I can understand why you chose another path, but thank you so much for doing it as long as you could.
To the parents of premature, and birth trauma babies.
Never give up. The things you face are the greatest challenge, and most daunting tasks ever faced by anyone except your baby. Perhaps your baby will die. So to will every child of God die, and that is not the measure of life. The shortest lives too can be filled with love. And however grim the future looks, never forget that it can happen to you!
I have held a baby smaller than a doll. “Kilo babies” they called them. Under 1000 grams. Eight years later, I watched her playing soccer. She really sucks at soccer! But she plays. She says, “My daddy and mommy told me I can do whatever I want.” She is a tiny bit spoiled.
I know another baby who was under eight pounds, for three years. She can’t walk, although for the last 28 years she has been workin’ on it. She escaped from our living area, a month ago. Go baby, go!
Never give up. Every day matters, and love is always part of the answer. Be sure you get yourself loved, too.
Another premmie mother checking in. My daughter was born at 30 weeks. She is now 10 years old, and just fine. Well, actually, she is glorious!!
I found the whole NICU experience abysmally disempowering and disheartening. I don’t think we could fault the care showed to the babies, but I do know that many of the mothers there at the same time as me were alienated by the experience.
Things I found helped:
Expressing milk. Apparently I was a pedigreed jersey cow in a previous life. You know how the body produces different milk so that it matches the needs of the developing baby? For premmies it is pale pink. By the time my daughter left hospital I had litres of the stuff frozen, and that didn’t include milk discarded because it had been frozen for a week. It did mean that she was on breastmilk only from a couple of days old, and for those of us who were able to express, the nursing staff would use our stored milk for feeds when we weren’t there, such as through the night.
Don’t be disheartened by a poor initial yield, maybe only a few mls. If you can keep up expressing milk while your child is in the NICU, the supply will usually ramp up and you should be able to breastfeed when your baby is able to suckle. The suckle ability is a developmental stage - the baby needs to be able to suck, swallow and breathe, and do it in the correct order. I still remember the look on my daughter’s face after she would latch - you could almost see the thoughts “suck, suck, suck…what’s next?, YES!! swallow…what’s not right? what’s not right? what is it? what is it? Oh yes! (enourmous gasping breath) BREATHE” and repeat.
Infant massage. How the physio in the NICU explained it to me was that the premmie babies are lying on their backs when they should be curled up in the womb. They can get an imbalance in the relative rates of development of the retractor and adductor muscles for their backs, chests and arms. This can cause cascading developmental delays, as the babies are delayed in bringing their hands to their faces and mouths, thus delayed in using their hands for exploration and in mouthing objects and sometimes on focussing on things as well. This can lead to delays in fine and gross motor skills, and potentially to cognitive delays. To counter this, they were starting to get the babies to sleep curved up, on their sides. As well as helping the baby sleep curved, which we did by rolling a lightweight baby blanket into a cylinder and curving it around her, I did an infant massage course, with specialised exercises designed to help redress the adductor/retractor imbalance. (And some other massage techniques intended to help with colic. Can’t say they worked, though!)
And something we weren’t warned about - sleep problems. Apparently, because NICU nurseries are active round the clock, babies who spend a while there notoriously don’t learn to differentiate day/night sleep/wake cycles as well as babies who go home on time. It helps to use cues for sleep time such as particular music as well as putting the lights out, to try and recondition the baby to sleep at the right times.
That’s an amazing story, Whynot. As is the story of your baby. Thank you for sharing with us.
(Yes, the puppies are fine. The two we had were reunited with their mother and two additional siblings later that night. There was a stillborn one, that I think might have been the source of the problem.
In fact, my boyfriends parents kept one, and she’s a pefectly healthy grown dog, though I sometimes miss being able to hold her in the palm of my hand )
Kinda a hijack. My youngest was 36 weeks, but had hypoxic damage at birth and straight into the NICU. She was on CPAP, and a common side effect is loss of suckling ability. She could swallow but didn’t develop suckling.
Anyhoo, for Serena, the Haberman feeder was a godsend. A special high tech nipple system that in cases like Serena work really well. 24 hours after getting the Habermann, the feeding tube came out and never went back in. Habermann Feeder was designed by a Mom who had a baby with a cleft palate and her miserable experience led to the feeder. You can search on it, and it’s an interesting story. And the Habermann Feeder was the bee’s knees for us.
The NICU gave great primary care, but the secondary care left a lot to be desired. They just had too many babies, 100+, and it was certainly tough as a parent. I was doing feeding therapy in the NICU with a syringe of milk instead of a feeding tube. That was some trying times.
My brand new nephew was born premature, although I’m not sure exactly how much. My SIL had eclampsyia and gestational diabetes and so they had to fast-track Collin to save his mom’s life. He’s been in the hospital still since birth 3-4 weeks back. I think he’s a tad over 4 lbs now and the physical therapist is now teaching him to suck. Keeping an eye on this space.
One of the reasons I think I’ll make a good NICU nurse is that, unlike Mame, I didn’t find the NICU disempowering or disheartening at all. Hers is the more common reaction, certainly, and I totally understand it. Which is why when I realized I wasn’t seeing it like everyone else, it made me think about why I might be one of the few suited to working in such a place.
Believing in reincarnation and in 'tween life pacts for learning probably helps. Even knowing that some of the babies weren’t going to be here long, I could see (within my belief structure) that they had chosen their short lives to teach their parents (or their nurses) something profound. For which I bless them, and wish them Godsspeed to their next lesson.
I’d add to this that even if your supply *never *ramps up to fill your preemie’s total need, keep at it if you can. My daughter’s milk wasn’t pink, but thick as cream, and yes, it changed as she changed. It never, in 14 months, turned into the watery yellowish stuff of most mom’s breastmilk - it stayed as high in fat as premium ice cream! Three inches of separated milk would be cream on the top inch - by my crude reckoning, that’s 33% milkfat, incredibly high! (And she was only in the third percentile for weight and height, even drinking mommy-milkshakes ten times a day. Obviously, my body “knew” she needed all that fat.)
The nurses referred to breastmilk as “golden medicine” or something like that. There are so many valuable and uncatalogued immune and health building components in preemie milk. I’m politically flexible on the breastfeeding issue, but I admit to being more rigid when it comes to preemies. They NEED that stuff, and if you can’t make any at all, then talk to the nurses about donated milk (which is pasteurized, unfortunately, but perhaps better than nothing.)
I was able to keep up with her needs and even pull ahead and get about a gallon (in 2 ounce tubes) frozen in our deep freeze, but by the time she came home, all the pumping, herbs and even Domperidone I could take only got me to about half her needs. Still, half if better than none, and I’m happy I was able to do that much. I don’t have data to back this up, but I secretly believe that one of the reasons we’ve dodged so many micropreemie bullets, health-wise, is that she had nearly exclusive breastmilk from the first day she got food until the day she left the hospital. I think one time they had to give her formula when they ran out of my milk and the agency nurse didn’t think to call me to bring in more.
How I envied the woman in the NICU pumping class who asked, in all naive sincerity, “When do you stop pumping? The milk never stops, so I don’t understand this ‘pump two minutes past the stop of the milk flow’ thing.” She was literally able to pump productively for 40 minutes or more, getting more than 12 ounces of milk, with a 2 day old preemie. I thought of my 4 mL bottles and wanted to cry.
Yep, our place was very good about moving them from one side to the other and they did spend sometime on their backs but curled up with the help of blanket and that bendy contraption I described earlier. This wall all to prevent what the nurses fondly called “toaster head”. I’ve noticed it now myself - older preemies often have heads that are flattened on each side from growing on a flat surface without interruption. Our main nurse is very proud of Cailiegh’s very round Charlie Brown head. Even now it’s the first thing she comments on when we go back for a visit! “Look at that perfectly round head! Oh, my goodness, you’re walking!” She just about passed out last time when Cailiegh said, “Hello!”
China Guy, I remember your thread trying to get Serena ]to eat with you so you could take her home. I literally cheered out loud when the two of you finally got it!
ShibbOleth, how is your SIL doing? One of the hardest parts about this whole thing is doing it when you’re not well - from eclampsyia and diabetes to recovering from major surgery. I hope he’s okay too. At 4 pounds, he’s probably one of the hugest babies in the nursery! But if his mom had gestational diabetes, his size can be misleading - they tend to produce large babies. Still, the good thing about size is that is means he has the physical reserves to deal with a lot of stuff happening to him, which is great. Do keep us updated.
'Nother preemie mom chiming in on WhyNot’s thread.
My son was b. at 23.5 weeks, 700 grams (1 lb 8 oz). I got to hold him when he was 40 days old and he spent 4 months in the NICU. He was delayed in meeting most infant/child developmental milestones, but seems to be on target now. His first two years of life came to about $740,000 as he had a specialist for every organ system and a bunch of other stuff, too.
Today, he is 9 and of normal height and weight, no glasses, no asthma, no allergies. He has a diagnosis of Asperger’s type autism, but is otherwise a healthy, happy kid. He takes pragmatic speech therapy and social skills training (from the same speech and language pathologist), and physical therapy for fine motor issues. All services are provided through the school district and are of very good quality.
I just had (routine) parent teacher meeting last week (4th grade) and both his teachers spoke very highly of him. They said they enjoyed just chatting with him because he has an unusual manner of conversation that they enjoy in him. I hear this a lot about him.
I’m not certain he actually has Asperger’s type autism, but he is certainly ‘different’ is some fundamental way and this diagnosis is the closest fit. His problem area is social skills, which sometimes leads to some unusual situations. I work with him very closely in this area. So many of our social rules are not taught, just understood or absorbed naturally. I try to tease out the rules and teach them to him- hopefully in advance of a problem and not afterwards.
He’s an extremely concrete and literal thinker, but once he understands a rule, he’s good-to-go. Unfortunately, he is at risk to be taken advantage of because he takes what people say at face value and does not understand that they may be misleading him at times. Hopefully, with the pathologist, my help, and experience, he will continue to become more socially savvy.
Yes, we were. The grave faced gentleman (boy, I don’t envy his job one bit!) told us that we had two options: induced vaginal delivery, which due to the position of the placenta and the age of the fetus would undoubtedly (his word) kill her by asphyxiation before birth or an emergency c-section which would result in all subsequent pregnancies being c-sections as well, because they had to do a classical cut internally. That’s a vertical cut along the uterine wall, and current medical wisdom is that if you attempt delivery with a previous vertical cut, your chances of uterine rupture and hemorrhaging are very very high. I know it sounds silly, but that was the hardest thing to hear - I had planned a very hippie woo non-intervention water birth with a dozen of my women friends there holding my hands and drumming her peacefully into this world. The information that I wasn’t going to get that EVER, not just with this one, was a real blow.
He explained her stats like this:
At 23 weeks and 0 days, 30% of babies survive. 70% of those will NOT have severe lifelong disabilities.
At 24 weeks and 6 days, 70% of babies survive. Still 70% of those will not have severe lifelong disabilities.
We were somewhere in the middle, and while he didn’t have exact numbers for us, his best educated estimate was for a 50% chance of survival, with that same 70% chance of no severe lifelong disabilities IF she survived.
There was no “wait and see” option, because of the infection in the placenta - I was at risk and needed immediate IV antibiotics of a level that would kill her, and the infection could at any moment spread to her and kill her. Not only did I have to decide, but I had to do it quickly. They were, in fact, already prepping the OR in case I decided to do surgery.
…and then everyone left the room for 10 minutes while my husband and I figured out what to do.
These numbers, by the way, depend on what level NICU your hospital has. There are three main levels, from “Well, we have bottles and blankets” to “very intensive care and cardiac surgery for the very sickest and preemiest of the preemies.” The hospital I planned on delivering at had a mid-level NICU, but when I called my midwife to tell her I was bleeding, she sent me to Evanston instead, closer to my home and with a level III NICU. Thank goodness she did.
I don’t have any questions to ask, but after reading your last post, I am even more impressed with your bravery in deciding to go ahead with the c-section! My friends who have had to have emergency c-sections (at term, mind you) have told of how tough it is to be told you have to do it, or given an “option” to do it which you know isn’t really an option, and being given a few minutes to “decide,” which really means “get used to the idea.” Having to actually make the decision basically whether the baby is going to die immediately or have a 50% chance of dying later…yikes.
I’ll just chime in, as a 2 month preemie myself, I turned out totally normal. So to any parents who are worried, I can provide at least one piece of anecdotal evidence that it can all end up completely well in the end.
My mother is a neonatatalogist. I’m amazed by the things they do. Right now, they’re working out of a new unit in the children’s hospital downtown. The unit is always full as we’re right at the corner of TN, AR and MS. We get babies from little towns in all three states.
-Lil
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