NICU
Cedars-Sinai's Good Beginnings recognizes that many parents find it helpful to keep a diary while their baby is in the NICU.
Keeping a NICU journal or a NICU diary provides a means of tracking your child's progress and remembering important details about his/her growth and development.
The Good Beginnings program has made a NICU Parent Diary page that is freely available online for NICU parents to download, print and use to track their NICU baby's progress.
As any NICU parent can tell you, time spent in the NICU is probably some of the most stressful experiences parents can live through with their baby.
One way to cope with this stressful time is for NICU Parents to keep an account of their time in the NICU in a Journal or a daily diary. Keeping a NICU Journal allows NICU parents to monitor the small changes that are occurring with their NICU newborn. These changes may be easier to see when recorded in writing and reviewed over time.
Read more: Keep a NICU Diary or Journal to Monitor Your Baby's Changes
In the last few articles we've been looking at how to create a circle of healing to surround your NICU baby with healing thoughts. CaringBridge is another online resource that allows NICU Parents to create a circle of healing around their NICU newborn.
Creating a Circle of Healing is a helpful way to for family and friends to feel that they are doing something for the NICU baby and their family by holding everyone in their thoughts.
Read more: CaringBridge Support and Connect NICU Parents and Their Families
In the last article we looked at how to create a circle of healing to surround your NICU baby with healing thoughts and give family and friends the feeling that they are doing something by holding the NICU baby in their hearts and their thoughts.
One of the resources that can help make creating a circle of healing easier is CarePages. Their unique service allows NICU Parents to create a personal, private web page to keep family and friends connected when a NICU baby is hospitalized.
One of the greatest difficulties for me when I as a NICU parent was the overwhelming feeling that there wasn't anything I could do for my daughter. This was particularly difficult, since I was used to being in the role of physician, not as parent. With my daughter I had to step back and turn over all of her care to the NICU Staff. These were the people who understood the NICU technology and could help her medically to heal.
Rather than sitting there feeling helpless, I decided to change my feeling by taking a more active role in her care and becoming an empowered parent. One of the things we did was to a Circle of Healing to have friends and family hold her 'in their hearts and minds and souls...so she could do better.'
Read more: Creating a Circle of Healing for Support in the NICU
NICU Parents take heart. Dr. Ronale Hoekstra, director of Neonatology at Children's Hospital of Minnesota in Minneapolis, has been following the results of 156 surviving micro preemies born between 1986 and 1990. Half of these former micro preemies are now in college. At the time of their birth, these babies had a 50-50 chance of surviving.
His results are inspiring for parents whose babies are in the NICU.
"Nothing can prepare you for coming in and seeing your one and one half pound baby on a high frequency ventilator," said Dr. Ronald Hoekstra. Yet as Inside Edition noted, these children who now adults in college, are proof that "babies born so small can grow up and dream big."
Read more: Inspiration from the NICU as Micro Preemies Grow Up
For Those Who Hold the Littlest Hands is the eBook I wrote over several years as the book that my husband and I would have wanted when our youngest was in the NICU.
The eBook is a careful balance of information and images, so as not to overwhelm distraught NICU Parents.
Since being first published in 2007, the book has been accessed by over 1200 people. The eBook is currently undergoing a revision for release as a printed booklet this summer.
It's frustrating as a NICU parent to try and interpret your baby's signals. I often found myself saying, "if only I could understand what she needs..."
Throw a rotten tomato at me if you wish, but I do agree with the decision of doctors involved in the the OctoMom case about keeping some of the preemie babies in the hospital just a little bit longer.
Tyler was born at 25 weeks and 3 days gestation. He was born in a hospital that didn't have a NICU or even a sick baby nursery so he had to be life-flighted elsewhere. (A guest post from Nancy Brown.)
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