Kirsten

It's only a thought and thoughts can be changed
Quote by Louise Hay


Take Two! Last week was my last obstetics clinical rotation for the semester and it ended on a very positive note. I spent the day working in the newborn nursery on the mother baby floor and enjoyed every moment of it. The nurse that worked with me was super friendly and knowledgable and was a good person to have to be "stuck" in the nursery with. I performed many assessments on and cuddled many of the little bundles of love that passed through the nursery. These newborns seemed rather large though in comparison to the premature baby I worked with the week before in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

In the NICU I worked with a male, triplet 1 of 3 that was born at 25 weeks gestation (full-term gestation is 40 weeks) so he was very premature. And get this, he weighed less than 2 pounds...can you imagine! Yes, he was extremely small and I couldn't help thinking how much he looked like a baby bird while he laid there in his isolette, naked except for his diaper with his nasogastric tube and a ventilator which helped him breath. His IV had recently been taken out. His skin was so transparent I was able to see all of his blood vessles through his skin and his eyes, although recently open (they weren't when he was delivered) mainly remained closed. He was tiny. I'm not sure the human eye is meant to see a baby this small.

It got me to thinking about how great advances in medicine have allowed for heroic acts such as saving 25 week old babies. After watching the documentary "Little Man" ( http://www.littlemanthemovie.com/) which documents the conception and birth of a baby born at 23 (if I remember correctly) weeks and the ensuing pursuit by healthcare wokers and the parents to save this baby's life, I'm not completely convinced that saving extremely premature babies is such a "heroic" act. The film is very honest in its portrayal of the struggles associated with having a baby born that premature and its fight to stay alive in the NICU. It documents the little boy's first few years of life and cleary shows his developmental delays and the toll it takes on his parents and sibling. The child in this documentary will always face developmental delays and physical challenges, not to mention the uncertianty of his expected life span. Is it really worth it? For the parents in terms of the emotional, financial and psychological costs or for the child in terms of the phsycial and developmental challenges it will most likely face? If there had been no medical intervention the babies would have died and would have been surgically removed. Yes, this also would have been a very sad situation, I'm not doubting that, I'm simply thinking outloud.

Anyhow, I signed a lease a few days ago! I'm officially moving January 1st. Very exciting.