Life in the NICU
posted 03.17.2005 by Kristen

Both babies had to spend about a week in the "special care nursery," a.k.a. the NICU. Nothing too dramatic; they were both eating on their own and breathing room air and all that good stuff.

Mainly they were in for things associated with their size: learning to regulate their body temperature and blood sugar, and to pack on some weight. Also they were both on phototherapy for jaundice, including the oh-so-fashionable BiliBlankets. The BiliBlankets are what cause the blue glow evident in many of the hospital photos. In addition to the BiliBlanket, Rita also had one day of the "tanning bed," overhead lights. That was probably one of the hardest treatments -- for the parents! -- because she had to wear these goggles to cover her eyes so they wouldn't get damaged by the lights. Thank god she only had to do that treatment for one day.

They also each had a couple of apnea/bradycardia episodes, so they were put on 3-day "event studies." Basically this means that they were hooked up to a monitor that tracked their breathing, heartrates, and oxygen saturation. Unfortunately the doctors felt that Rita's breathing patterns were a bit premature, so she is being sent home on an apnea monitor (this is why you see wires protruding from her clothing in many pictures). We are sooo looking forward to that. Note the sarcasm. Honestly, we'd rather be safe than sorry, and we're happy that the technology exists that will help with that, but from everything we observed in the NICU, the apnea monitor seems like overkill for the type of apneas/bradys she had. She only had two incidents, and both were self corrected. We feel like the neonatologists are being over-cautious in sending her home on the monitor, and it's just going to be so stressful and, frankly, a pain in the butt to have her on the monitor. But hopefully she won't have to be on it for long, maybe just a month.

Before they would let the girls come home they had to take a "car seat challenge," which they do for all babies under 5.5 pounds. Most car seats are made for babies 5 pounds and up, so there's some concerns that a smaller baby won't fit properly, and actually might end up getting in a squished up position that would make it difficult for her to breathe. So they make you bring in your car seat, and they add padding (in the form of rolled up receiving blankets and baby hats) to get the baby to fit better. Then they stick the baby in the car seat for an hour and make sure none of the alarms go off on the monitors. Luckily both girls passed the challenge with flying colors, but it was really stressful to watch them all cramped up funny in the seats. As you can see from the photo, the car seat challenge made Natalie very angry!

The funny thing is that I kept thinking that they didn't look as small as I thought they would for their size. But then when they got put in the car seats, they looked so teeny! It's all about perspective, I guess.

Natalie came home on Tuesday, March 15, and Rita came home on Thursday, March 17. Yay for having babies at home.

More NICU photos available here.