Visiting my baby in NICU during a Pandemic
My son was born in May of this year so it seems strange to be typing up this blog 6 months later but if I am being honest, up until now I have not felt ready to reminisce. Visiting him in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) during a pandemic was one of the most difficult times in my life and although it is not an experience I would like to relive, I hope this blog helps anybody else in a similar position and even helps to see the positive aspects of the situation.
I gave birth to Jacob during the height of the pandemic here in the UK. I mentioned in my birth story blog that this didn’t really affect us that much and I wish I could say the same for the time Jacob spent in NICU.
The NICU was made up of 3 different units; ICU (Intensive Care Unit), HDU (High Dependency Unit), and Special Care Unit. Unfortunately, after a long and hard labour, Jacob suffered from Meconium aspiration which meant he had to be placed in ICU immediately after birth.
I entered into ICU for the first time with stomach-churning anxiety, which never really went away the entire time he was in the hospital. Seeing Jacob in an incubator was not made any easier by the fact that I had to wear a mask. It is difficult enough to process everything a doctor is telling you about your sick baby, but we had the added difficulty of hearing them behind their heavy PPE gear. I tried to take in as much information as I could and from the info, I could pick out, he had been transferred to ICU requiring inflation breaths and ventilation breaths with oxygen. He was screened for sepsis and started on High Flow Oxygen support for respiratory distress. Fortunately, Jacob was weaned off the High Flow after 24 hours which meant he could be moved from ICU to HDU. He still needed Oxygen support but only required the Low flow type. He was also on a 5-day course of antibiotics to clear the bacterial infection he had got from the meconium.
Jacob spent only 3 days in HDU to our delight as he had begun responsive feeding quickly, this meant that he would wake up for feeds rather than need to be drip-fed. I must point out that he was the only full-term baby on the unit, all the other babies were premature so they often needed to be woken by nurses in order to feed them and this was mostly via a drip.
One of the nurses in HDU mentioned to us that he was doing well and that it was likely that he would get moved to Special Care soon. The staff were great at making a big deal of certain milestones. I remember the first of these was being able to dress him and move him from an incubator to a cot - When I say cot, it was really the same as an incubator but without the lid (We called it the casserole dish haha).
One of the great things the NICU had introduced whilst we were there was an app you could log into and see any updates on your baby. We found this really helped as we couldn’t be there overnight. Some of the nurses did such a lovely job of uploading photos and writing a message to us from Jacob’s perspective and it was through this app that we found out one morning he had been moved from HDU to special care. I remember us looking at the app in the morning and it made our day to know he was doing so well.
Special Care had a completely different atmosphere to the other units. I didn’t feel quite as anxious going on to the ward as it felt more relaxed and the fact that I knew this was the last place he had to be before he could be sent home was a reason to feel positive. Unfortunately, he was in here a little longer than we would have liked (26 days to be exact) and there were times when I felt quite low thinking he would never be allowed home. He was reliant on the smallest amount of oxygen (sometimes only 0.1%) but every time they tried him on 100% air, his saturation levels would drop below 95% and they had to put his oxygen up again. This became very infuriating and I found myself getting obsessed with the monitors for which i was repeatedly told by nurses not to bother myself with.
So…the rules for the units regarding COVID-19 were, you had to wear a face mask at all times and that only one parent per baby was allowed on the unit at any one time. In retrospect, I understand why they had to do this but at the time this was very difficult for me and my husband to come to terms with, particularly the latter as navigating being first-time parents is hard enough, but to do this in front of a group of doctors and nurses without the support from your partner or family was tough.
Realising we needed to make the best of a bad situation, me and my husband decided to take shifts. I would go to visit Jacob in the day usually 12 until 6 and then Scott would go for a couple of hours in the evening which allowed him to work during the day. We were not allowed to visit between the hours of 9 and 11 am due to doctors doing their rounds and this would mean too many people on the unit.
Most of my visits were based on feeding. I would always ring up in the morning to see when he last fed and I would bring in any milk I had pumped in the night and in the morning so this could be stored in the fridge. This was to be given to Jacob whenever I was not there to breastfeed and in most cases when I was there i.e when breastfeeding didn’t go to plan. Feeding Jacob was one of the most challenging aspects of the early days as it is for any new mum but trying to establish breastfeeding whilst he was hooked up to monitors was infuriating to say the least (Feeding on its own deserves a completely separate blog and I certainly went on a journey with feeding Jacob). I would always attempt to breastfeed him but I would say more often than not, I would end up bottle feeding him expressed milk with a top-up of formula because he always wanted more than I could provide.
For any mother who finds themselves in the unfortunate position of their newborn being on a Neonatal unit and wanting desperately to breastfeed, I will say this, you will have more help with breastfeeding than if your baby was born healthy and sent home the next day. The nurses in Special Care were amazing and most of them were breastfeeding experts so I would recommend using them to your advantage. I can’t speak for all hospitals but the Neonatal team at Wythenshawe hospital were a big help.
We would always ask the question of how he was doing and if they could give us an idea of when he would be discharged but the nurses did not like to say anything just in case he took a turn for the worst. One of the nurses explained to us that he would only come off the oxygen once he was ready……..and just like that on the 15th of June, I walked onto the unit and was told that he had managed 24 hours on 100% air and had passed his sleep study. This meant we could take him home!
‘Rooming in’ is an option they offer to parents whose babies have spent a considerable time on Neonatal, whereby you spend a couple of nights on the unit in a bedroom with just you and your baby as if you were at home but you can press a button for help if need be. I would definitely recommend this option as we found it helped transition him from hospital to home.
After all those days of feeling low and disheartened, watching baby after baby get discharged from hospital, we were finally able to bring our car seat in to take him home.
Jacob’s time on Neonatal was distressing, to say the least, but all the nurses make a difficult journey much easier to deal with and it was comforting to know he was getting the best care possible to allow him to come home.
