I just visited the preemie ward at Albany Medical Center

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or, in proper terminology, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

I work for a not-for-profit organization that funds research to prevent prematurity and birth defects. (Should be easy enough to figure out now if you’re curious). One of the things we do is have a staff person down at the NICU, to help parents. She (let’s call her Tanya) took me on my very first NICU tour, even though I have been here over three years.

Walking around the NICU I was struck by how close and crowded everything was. Lots of mysterious equipment, lots of signs saying “Don’t come in if you have a cold”, etc.

Of course the best and the worst were the tiny little babies. I’ve seen tons of pictures, but the real thing is of course different. There were babies in isolettes, in cribs, in ventilators, and the worst of all - little tiny 24 week old babies in these plastic containers, like E.T.

Tiny as they were, they were still moving, breathing, waving their little tiny fists weakly. You could see the love everywhere; pink & blue blankets, pictures, drawings by siblings, loving cards from grandparents.

There were a few parents in with their children. I felt sorry for every baby who had to be alone because parents had to deal with real life, and every parent that couldn’t be with their child.

There was a woman there who was holding her baby…Tanya asked her “Is she doing better?” And the woman shook her head no, and shook it, and shook it, and you could just see the tears bubbling up in her eyes as she kept saying “No…no…no…no…” over and over again.

I won’t cry. I won’t.

2

That’s one tough unit. :frowning:

I work in a hospital with a 100 bed NICU, but I don’t work in the NICU. Actually, I avoid the place.

On a happier note, my x 23 weeker started second grade this week!

And, thanks for your help!

3

I know exactly how you feel.

My younger nephew spent the first six weeks of his life in the NICU at NY Presbyterian Children’s Hospital. He was born with a severe heart defect that required surgery when he was a week old in order to even give him a shot at living. Two more surgeries later, he’s nearly four years old and runs around with such maniacal energy, it’s unreal. We owe his life to the surgeons and the wonderful nurses of the NICU that took such good care of him in the early days.

My nephew’s incubator was bedecked too with cards, and drawings his big brother made. My sister and BIL were there as much as their own strength allowed, but yes, life intruded and made it impossible for them to be there a much as they wanted. And it was hard, so very hard, to see my nephew - and the other babies - hooked to a million and one pieces of monitoring equipment, tubes everywhere for all sorts of things, and you wonder why such a tiny little human being has to go through so much.

But my family was lucky. Since my sister was in her early 40s, her pregnancy had been carefully monitored from the beginning, and my nephew’s heart defect was discovered quite early. They literally had months in which to plan for his care, and come to grips with the risks involved, and the chance that he might not make it. So many of the other parents of babies in the NICU were young, and had no reason to expect anything other than a normal, healthy baby, when the weight of the world came down on them at their child’s birth.

My sister took my nephew back to the NICU for a visit when he was a year old. She found out from the nurses that of the 12 or so other babies that had been in his NICU ward, only one other child was still living.

Dammit, I’m not going to cry either.

4

You know, some people express nostalgia for “the good old days”

But in “the good old days” none of the babies above would have made it. Heart surgery on a preemie would have even been a dream. Two of the twelve babies in the previous post are alive, “back then” they wouldn’t have been.

Thank you, but with all it’s problems I’ll take the now, when we have vaccinations, antibiotics, open heart surgery, and so on, to help babies, young children, and whoever else has needed it. My maternal great-grandmother bore six children, and only three lived to their majority. One birth was twins, and the healthy looking twin died within a day, while the puny one grew up to be my great-uncle George. Maybe the other twin would have lived, if it could have had the care available today. One child died as a toddler of whooping cough and the third of scarlet fever.

5

My wife had our first twin daughters this past March through invitro. They were both just under 24 weeks and both under 1 lb. Unfortunately they both caught staff infections and passed within 48 hours of eachother 2 weeks later.
I still can’t thank enough the staff at the NICU. While some people these days call people like Tiger Woods, or Dan Marino their heroes, the nurses and doctors at the NICU are my heroes. Nurses that work the 12 hour overnight shift to monitor these babies are the ones who should be making the million dollar salaries.
The NICU people were so kind and caring, making sure that not only were they doing everything they could for our girls, but made sure that my wife and I were okay, and had all of our questions answered.
They even had us do things we didn’t think of at the time cause everything was so chaotic. They made us take lots of pictures. Which at the time seemed unimportant but now are priceless to us.

These people are truly miracle-workers and I like to think they have places reserved for them in heaven. My hat is off to them all.

6

I spent more time than I ever wanted to in a NICU. My child was there for 90 days.

We saw parents and their babies going home and were jealous of them. We saw parents go home for the last time without their child and thanked everyone and everything we could imagine that it wasn’t us.

We learned how to operate equipment we’d never even heard of. We became encyclopedias of knowledge about preemie issues.

Neonatal nurses and doctors are incredible, amazing individuals. I will never forget those wonderful, outstanding people who helped to save my daughter’s life.

Thank you for your work and all that you do to help parents like me and keep up the good work trying to prevent more parents from going through it. Your work is greatly appreciated.

7

Hampshire, I’m sorry about your twins. I am glad you had good treatment at the NICU, though…from what I hear many hospitals do not give that kind of care.

evilbeth, parents never forget how many days they were there, even years later.

And Baker, you are absolutely right. Not to mention that whatever the best treatment was, in the old days only white people would get it. I saw Indian babies, Puerto Rican babies, black babies, all different colors and races and nationalities, all being loved and taken care of.

:o No…thank YOU. It’s the parents who are the real heroes, waiting for their children, only able to look at them through glass.

8

My wife and I lived at the Neo-natal ICU at Children’s Hospital Boston for most of this summer to be with our new daughter Sophie. The hospital and staff couldn’t have been more excellent. The nurses told us that they lose about one baby a month on the ward. Sophie was that baby. It is a tough place to be for both parent and staff. We are still getting cards and calls from the people that we met there.

9

Shagnasty, I wasn’t aware of your loss. I am so sorry. I’m glad that at least you were treated well.

10

Thanks. I have never mentioned it on the board before but this thread was just too relevant. Sophie wasn’t a premie. She had one of the rarest, untreatable genetic disorders in the world (Sulfite Oxidase Deficiency). We knew that she was going to die on the third day after she was admitted. She lasted another 6 weeks. The staff did everything possible to make us and her comfortable. They even gave us this special apartment located within the neonatal ICU to stay in with her. It was a little like being at home with doctors and nurses only seconds a away. We also were assigned a crisis team that could arrange just about anything we needed (sort of like an ICU concierge medical team). None of us could have gotten any better care so that is something to be thankful for. The people in those units are amazing.

11

I… was one of those babies.

I was born three months premature, in 1963. Mom said I almost didn’t make it. She said the nurses stayed with me and kept an eye on me pretty much 24/7.

To all the hospital people: thank you.

12

Having spent nearly 4 months there with WhyBaby, I have to say that as time went on, I was less overwhelmed with the sadness and more overwhelmed with the amazing coolness of the NICU. Watching the miracles on a daily basis just left me in awe of the strength of the parents, the medical staff, but mostly of the babies. They look so darn fragile, when in reality, they are such fighters and so strong! I mean, WhyBaby came into the world with literally no skin - it hadn’t developed yet - and yet her little stick arms and legs were strong enough to kick the nurse’s hand away when she came at her with a needle. There was one little guy two beds over who was just SO MAD that his little body wouldn’t let him put his fists in his mouth - one afternoon of his howling and you knew he’d be a prizefighter someday.

And then there were the ones who didn’t make it. Even they held on longer than anyone would have imagined. I swear, they were strong enough to hold onto life long enough for their parents to come to terms with what was happening, and then, with quiet dignity, just floated away with a delicate grandeur I’d never been priveledged to witness before.

The staff is great. The parents were all so wonderful. But those babies - they are my heroes.

(And as soon as WhyBaby’s a little older, I’m enrolling in nursing school to become a NICU nurse. Those little babies finally showed me my true path in life.)

13

From early 2001 to early 2002, I volunteered at the local hospital and was assigned to the maternity ward. I spent much of my time at the nurses’ desk, and the door to the NICU was directly across from us: they didn’t use volunteers, so I never went in there, but I saw a lot of stories unfold and held back my tears more times than I can count. The entrance to the nursery was past the door to the NICU, and you could almost see the families of healthy babies mentally cross themselves when they walked past that door. But not all deaths took place in the NICU: one night when I was working a woman and her husband came to the hospital to deliver a baby they knew would be stillborn (more than three years later I still cry at this memory). Plastic yellow roses were taped up outside the doors of rooms like that, so everyone would be aware of the loss. I was friendly with one or two of the NICU nurses – they’re definitely a special breed.

(And 32 years ago my little brother almost didn’t make it out of a NICU; he was so sick that he was given last rites. NICUs are amazing places.)

14

We are thankful in our home for the NICU in Las Vegas- NVME twins were born there 6 years ago, and had a short 3 week stay. We visited twice a day, in the morning and in the evening to say goodnight to the babies. One sad night we were there to hear a mothers anguished cries when her baby died of heart failure. We each had a twin in our arms and tears fell as she cried out for her baby. It was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever experianced.

NICU’s are miracle shops

15

My son was in the NICU for 14 days after he was born in 2000. It was just a blur of washing hands, learning how to hold and feed him around all the tubes and wires, watching him breathe and hoping the O2 sat level would climb above 85%, falling asleep out of pure exhaustion in those big comfortable rocking chairs and somehow tuning out the endless bleeps or blips of the monitors (until one of them went off and launched me instantly into red alert).

NICU nurses are simply incredible. They truly have a gift and I will always be grateful to the ones in our hospital for making an incredibly stressful time in our lives a lot easier to deal with. The nurses in the Children’s Hospital were a wonderful bunch of people too–all 7 times my son was a patient there.

16

Worked for 2 weeks in a level II NICU during my Peds rotation at the end of May, took call at the Texas Children’s level III NICU which is one of those unearthly places where the 23 weekers and the 650 gm babies are in the majority.

I’ve experienced all kinds of medicine, but neonatology is really its own world. I mean, it seemed that the most used drug for those 2 weeks was caffeine. I remember writing a note that started:
Frmr 32 WBD/33 WBE DOL#14 BG PMH/o NRFHT, HIV+, GBS+ incomplete rx, now c AOP, 6 o/n, 2 req stim, plan for OCRG c pH probe today to r/o GER…

The alphabet soup, the completely different set of diseases, many incredibly serious, that you see in prematurity (NEC, ROP, CP, hyperbili, life threatening GER, AOP, IRDS, etc. etc.), the very limited treatment options, the completely different physiology, and all of the emotion attached to all decisions make it a very interesting and strange experience. I wouldn’t wish going through that as a parent on my worst enemies, and to those here who have been through it, you are tough tough tough for just getting through it.

I breathed a big sigh of relief a few days ago. My wife made it to 32 weeks of gestation without so much as a Braxton-Hicks. Four and a half weeks until term and every day that passes, we have more surfactant and more weight on those little bones.

17

Worked in the CWH NICU in Dublin for a week.
I got a rooom with 4 babies, all under 1500g.
One my last day one of the little girls slipped away.

It was heartbreaking, but my hats are off to the people who work there everyday, and to all the incredibly brave parents.

It’s not something I could do.

18

I’d rather work hospice than NICU. I admire the people who do it greatly, but I couldn’t. Not in a million years.

And let’s hear it for Coney Island, the site of the first neo-natal incubators, where they were tourist attractions. :eek: (By all the accounts I’d read and heard they gave the best possible care to their patients, but there’s still something about the idea of letting strangers walk past watching it all as a tourist attraction that still makes me cringe a little.)

19

NICU people transcend the world. Audrey and Serena spent 18 days here in Shanghai. Hope y’all will forgive me though that I never want to even drive in the same neighborhood. Those were rough days.

20

I have a friend who worked as a nurse in a NICU for a couple of years. She got to the point where she’d about decided she never wanted to have children because she couldn’t go through the uncertainty. (It was pointed out to her that only a very small percentage of babies spend time in NICU). She then moved to being a labor and delivery nurse- which helped, now most of the babies she saw were healthy. Still, she saw a disproportionate amount of difficult labors/ c-sections, etc. Last I saw her she’d just about transitioned out of nursing altogether and was starting to think about having a baby someday.

NOTE: her choice to leave nursing had much more to do with the stress and strain of too many responsibilities, not enough nurses and too many administrators who put money first than her experiences with patients or their problems.