Kangaroo Care

Kangaroo care is where the mother or father hold the baby in their bare chest, enabling skin to skin contact. The first time the doctor asked us to try it, even though I’d read briefly about it, it was hard to believe it was a good idea. He looked so secure in his incubator, so safe and isolated, how could he possibly survive outside it? He had so many cables and tubes attached to him, I wondered how they could safely move him! The doctor assured me, that it was very good for the baby. He said “you wait, see how his heart rate and breathing are a bit unstable? Within 10 seconds of going on to your wife's chest it will stabilise”. To my surprise he was 100% correct, the monitors showed that within a few seconds of going on my wife's chest his breathing slowed and deepened (good for expanding the lungs), his heart rate settled to a lower number and he rested. My wife also relaxed, up to that point she had had headaches and been quite tense. As soon as he was placed on her chest you could see her visibly relax.

The doctor explained some of the other benefits of kangaroo care. Studies have shown it improves the babies health and improves their overall health. They gain weight more quickly, are discharged earlier and suffer fewer complications. The mothers body will adjust automatically to what the baby needs. If the baby is cold, the mothers body will heat up. If the baby is too hot, it will cool down. It’s a truly amazing experience.

I too got to try the kangaroo care, and though I was a little nervous at first when he settled on my chest it was an amazing feeling as he settled in and fell immediately into a deep sleep, and seeing the monitors showing his heart rate and breathing settle was comforting.

A few times during our stay they stopped Kangaroo Care if he was unstable. Its quite surprising how much it affected us having to stop doing it, its really forges a special connection and its tough to stop for a period of time.

A tip for dads is to do as much Kangaroo care as they will let you, as if your baby is still in the NICU when the baby starts breastfeeding there won’t be much time for you to hold your baby.

NICU Equipment

This is a list of some of the equipment we saw in our NICU. Your mileage might vary! After a while in the NICU you’ll get familiar with all the equipment, what it does, and how changing equipment can signify changes in your babies condition, I’ll expand on that in a later post.

Nicu Incubator

There are many types of Incubators used in the NICU, a quick google will reveal the many different types. Our baby had a GE Healthcare Giraffe Omnibed (pictured). These are used to keep the baby warm, as premature babies struggle to maintain their own body temperature, and also humidify the air. As well they provide easy access for the many cables and tubes a premature baby needs. Some have their own built in monitoring, others use external monitors.






Monitoring Equipment

Monitors like the one pictured (which is what our baby had) are used to monitor vital stats of the baby. They can be configured to display in many different formats, but typically I found in our NICU they showed heartrate (the top line in the picture), Blood oxygenation level as a percentage (the middle line in the picture) and then also breathing rate (not pictured).

They do this via various monitors stuck to the babies body. 3 chest monitors are stuck on for the heartrate. The blood oxygenation is measured via a red light that is usually strapped to the babies extremities (hands and feet), it measures the colour of the light on the other side and determines the blood oxygenation level that way.





Infusion Pumps

Infusion Pumps like the ones pictures are to assist with slowly pushing medication (sometimes injection just 15ml can be done over 4 hours for example). I was always fascinated with these. The first one pictured is to handle IV infusions, the second one (as you can see in the picture) handles syringes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

High Flow Oxygen Support

This equipment is linked together to help the baby get oxygen. Basically oxygen and air are hooked up to the Air-Oxygen blender, where they can set what percentage of oxygen should be pumped out. That goes to a device to say how many liters of air per minute should be pushed out. This goes to a humidifier (pictured below) to add humidity to the air which is then sent via a tube to a nasal canular.

 

Worth noting, with our baby his lungs had issues with humidity so we had to keep a close eye on the tube coming out of the humidifier as it would build up drops of water which would go via the tube into the nose and into the lungs, so we had to monitor that and ask the staff to clear out the water from time to time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ventilator

If your baby has to be forced to breath on a schedule (as is likely when first born, below 34 weeks or so) then he will probably be on a ventilator. This machine will work similar to the above, but the tube will be inserted into the lungs, and the machine will force inhale/exhale. The one we had had two modes of working, that would force the baby to breath, and another that would wait for the baby to breath and would assist. Clever stuff.