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Baylor Medical Center at Garland

 
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Caring for the Smallest Babies 

Baylor Garland NICU Offers Special Care

Some babies have a rocky start in life. What happens when everything doesn’t go as expected and your newborn requires medical intervention?

”Parents are often overwhelmed, but we try to make them comfortable and explain everything that is going on,” says Cindy Heard, RNC-NIC, in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Baylor Medical Center at Garland. The NICU cares for premature babies from 28 weeks gestation, as well as full-term babies requiring some extra attention after they’re born.

Tender Treatment

Amid the moms and dads holding their babies in recliners and rocking chairs, there’s a continual quiet hum of activity as nurses and doctors care for the littlest patients. Infants weighing less than four pounds are placed in warm isolettes, since they can’t yet regulate their own body temperature.

Little round discs attached to their chest monitor heart rate and respiration.

Often, a tiny intravenous umbilical line is slipped into the belly button so nurses can collect blood samples and monitor blood pressure without too much disturbance to the baby.

Babies weighing less than two pounds also may receive breast milk or formula through a nasogastric tube if they’re not ready for bottle or breastfeeding. Sometimes a ventilator is required to help them breathe.

”We provide what’s called developmental care, which means we try to simulate the environment in the womb,” Heard says. Blankets on top of the isolettes keep them dark, and monitors and phones are kept on a low setting.

To re-create the boundaries of the womb, nurses place “snugglies” around the baby so that every time it stretches or moves, it touches something.

Convenient Care

Bigger babies who have fewer complications follow a more typical schedule of waking to eat every few hours, which allows parents to hold and feed them, change diapers and take temperatures. “We spend a lot of time educating parents about the babies’ care and development,” Heard says.

Parents can visit almost any time, day or night, and a nurse practitioner is always present to answer questions. Siblings over the age of 2 can visit briefly, except during the RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) season from October to April.

”We help these babies get a healthy start, and we know we make a difference,” says Cathy Johnson, director of the Women’s Center at Baylor Garland.

Know Your Resources

For more information about the neonatal intensive care unit or the Women’s & Children’s Services at Baylor Garland, call 1.800.4BAYLOR visit our Women’s Services page.