There were many confusing statements I got when I delivered my premature baby.  Many nurses discouraged me from touching him.  My mother instinct told me that he recognised my voice and eventhough he was only 28 weeks, he tried hard to move his head and tried to open his eyes when I first called out his name.

So, I spent the first week or so in a situation where I wanted badly to be with him but was discouraged.  Moreover, he was warded in the adult ICU and entrance was very strict.  Now, looking back, if I had known how important is kangaroo care towards his growth, I would have fought all those obstacles and spent more time doing kangaroo care.

Therefore, I hope all parents with premature or ill newborn babies will do their best to spend time with their babies.  If caesarean operation gives you discomforts, ask your ob-gynae to prescribe you pain killers so that your movements aren’t hampered.  Find a lounge seat and  ask your medical caregivers to allow you kangaroo care.

When do we start Kangaroo Care?

Your baby’s doctors and nurses will decide when your baby is stable enough for Kangaroo Care. Once you have decided to try Kangaroo Care and your baby is ready, discuss the best time to do Kangaroo Care with your baby’s nurse. It should occur during a period in the day when you and your baby can remain uninterrupted in the Kangaroo position for as long as is comfortable.

Wear a blouse or shirt that opens in the front. Your baby will be placed on your bare chest in an upright position. The respiratory therapist may also help transfer your baby from the isolette to your chest. Once you and your baby are comfortable, relax and enjoy.

Sometimes, medical staffs are rather reluctant to accomodate the parents because they felt that we are in the way of their routine.  Therefore, talk to the head of consultant and obtain a clearance from the head.

Find out more about kangaroo care from this hospital website.  You can also find out from your respective hospital, if they have proper booklets to distribute.

I have issues related to how, we parents are briefed/educated when we have an ill child.  When I had my premature baby, I wasn’t given any formal CPR training at all.  (I learnt it one year after his death)

On the 2nd day after he was discharged home, after staying in the hospital for about eight weeks from his birth, he stopped breathing but was resuscitated by my husband and I.  I called the hospital and no one sent an ambulance to us.  We phoned the paediactrician but there was no answer.  Therefore, we took time to bring him to the emergency ward and an even longer time to have him properly assessed. (he had a pneumothorax as a result of that)

This is only a screenshot from AAP.  Download the two pages guide from AAP.

Therefore, I made it my personal vendetta to see that all parents, even parents of healthy children, are being made aware of what to do in an emergency.  Don’t just rely on your doctors and don’t assume that you do not need to know because things like these only happened to others.    I had written a few articles in the newspapers about CPR.

Giving first aid

and

Be prepared at all times 

A paediatrician who subsequently took over the care of my son never let his patients’ parents to take their critically ill (but recovered) children home without first making sure that the parents are properly trained to handle emergency situations.  He used to conduct a yearly CPR training session for parents.

Parents with children who are critically ill before, please surf over to the American Academy of Paediatrics and download their .pdf files.  Print it and make copies and give it to all your child’s caregiver (assuming you do not take care of him/her full time).  Translate it to a language they understand.  Do this for your child’s sake.

For other parents, you may also want to equip yourself with this because no one knows whom will be the next victim.  I had been in the emergency rooms and had seen parents bringing in already dead children (due to choking/strangulation) because they did not follow the proper procedure of applying Heimlich Maneuver, CPR and calling for emergency support.  Instead, they brought the child, rushing to the hospital, losing precious minutes and hence, the loss of lives.

Accidents do not discern it’s victim.  A staff nurse in an emergency ward with a dentist husband had rushed to the hospital they worked in with a badly scalded baby.   So, never say never.  Learn your ABC (acronyms used in CPR procedure for Airways, Breathing and Circulation)

This medical news is related to the call to to lower the 24-week limit on abortion.  However, there are many encouraging datas related to the survival of premature babies which I am sure parents of premature babies will be glad to know of. 

Dr Huseyin Mehmet, is a research scientist at Imperial College, London.

He also does work at Hammersmith Hospital on brain damage in premature babies.

“I’ve been working at Hammersmith for some 13 years and when I first started working there it was quite unusual to send a foetus home at 24 weeks, which is just under six months pregnancy.

“Now we can send many children home who are born at 23 weeks gestation. In terms of viability, those children who go home are obviously alive but there may be some questions about quality of life.”

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I found this webpage with photos of babies in the NICU and also some parents’ guide. Do surf over to better understand what to expect from NICU in the early days. NHS has very excellent articles for parents so do take time to read through.

NICU is a large area with glass partitioned rooms. There are 28 cots. It is brighly lit, very warm and filled with complicated machines which buzz, ring and beep quite regularly. The machines are very sensitive and are just telling the nurses about something or asking them to check the baby’s condition. You may find this frightening at first but will quickly get used to it.

I hope this news which I copied from BBC News will serve as a motivation for parents with premature baby.

One of the smallest babies to have been born in Britain is about to leave hospital to live with her parents.

Ruby Dunn weighted 12.5 ounces (354 grams) when she was born 14 weeks premature but then her weight fell to just 10.5 oz (298 grams).

Doctors at Bristol’s Southmead neonatal unit say Ruby is one of the smallest surviving babies they can remember.

Her parents Craig and Kerry Dunn have given Ruby the middle name of Angel because she is their “little miracle”.

Speaking at an event to celebrate a £1.2m fundraising campaign for the Tiny Lives campaign, Ruby’s parents spoke of their joy

Proud father Craig Dunn, said: “We have a picture of Ruby at home holding on to Kerry’s little finger nail and her whole hand just wrapped around the nail.”

Now weighing in at just under 4lb (1.81kg), Ruby is ready to be taken home.

“All you want is to take the baby home. When you’re at home you think about her all the time and you miss her,” said her mum Kerry.

Every year the Southmead’s neonatal intensive care unit cares for more than 500 babies born either too small or too sick to cope on their own.

Excerpt of news from Forbes. When I experienced heavy bleeding, my ob-gynae did administered corticosteroids for me but unfortunately, he couldn’t complete the dosage as I had a preterm 28-week delivery.

FRIDAY, June 9 (HealthDay News) — Giving repeat doses of corticosteroids to expectant moms at risk for preterm delivery may reduce the chances of illness in their newborns, a new report suggests.

“Short-term benefits for the babies in our study support the use of repeat doses of corticosteroids in women who remain at risk of very preterm birth seven or more days after an initial course [of the drugs],” the Australian authors concluded in the June 10 issue of The Lancet.

Babies born prematurely run the risk of developing lung disease and respiratory distress syndrome. Currently, mothers who are at risk of preterm delivery are given a single dose of corticosteroids to help reduce the risk of their child developing these conditions.

Earlier studies have shown that repeating the doses of corticosteroids appears to be beneficial. However, other studies have found adverse side effects, including growth problems, infection after birth, and abnormal development in childhood among children whose mothers received several doses of corticosteroids.

“There has always been a controversy about giving multiple doses of corticosteroids,” said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “You do want to optimize the lungs, but there is fear that you will cause developmental damage,” she said.

Because of this, doctors have been reluctant to adopt the multi-dose regimen, Wu said. “We need further studies and long-term follow-up,” she said. “You really have to follow these kids until they are five or six years old to see if there are any developmental problems,” she said.

More information

For more on respiratory distress syndrome, head to the American Lung Association.

This is a very long interview with Dr. Carol Goodheart which I picked up from ABC News. Please surf over to ABC News website for the complete interview and if you have a child that is diagnosed with cancer or other critical illness, you may want to find out about the above book. I am copying part of the article in case the URL doesn’t work in future.

When a child gets a diagnosis of cancer, the life of every member of the family changes drastically.

Dr. Carol Goodheart knows this professionally and personally. She is a psychologist practicing in Princeton, N.J., and the author of “Living with Childhood Cancer: A Practical Guide to Help Families Cope.” Her family also has been touched by childhood cancer.

Goodheart spoke to ABC News about a subject that is close to her heart:

ABC NEWS: What made you want to research and write a book on this subject?

DR. CAROL GOODHEART: My granddaughter was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 9 months. And what I learned in that process is that people talk to me in a different way as a family member in the hospital than they ever spoke to me when they came to consult me in my office.

ABC NEWS: What are the first things a family goes through when they get this news?

GOODHEART: The diagnosis of cancer for any family is truly frightening. It’s like an earthquake, an upheaval that happens to people. And they need to assimilate that and then say, “All right, this is the new reality. How do we go forward?”

The treatment often makes children very ill. Modern treatments for cancer are very aggressive, so they’re hard to bear. They’re hard for the child and they’re hard for the family to watch. But as long as there is treatment, there is hope.

ABC NEWS: This kind of news comes to only a small number of families. Is anyone, therefore, ever prepared to hear it?

GOODHEART: I don’t think so. When the diagnosis itself comes, it is a terrific shock. The parents are the ones who are told. And then, depending on the age of the child, the child needs to understand what’s going to happen to him or her.

The initial period is a very steep learning curve. Families want to know: Where is the best place to get treatment? Can we do it near home? Will our medical insurance cover this? Should we go to the local hospital or fly to a place that specializes in treating children with cancer?

At the same time those decisions are being made, families are reorganizing their ordinary life. Which parent is going to go with the child? Who’s going to take the other child to soccer practice? If both parents work, is one parent going to take a leave of absence?

So it’s a period of reorganizing internally with all the feelings, externally with how the family runs, and on the outside learning a whole new medical system.

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Posted by admin at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Cancer

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