Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

I worked at the hospital today. I am primarily a Labor and Delivery RN and this was my weekend on. We nurses in the childbirth center are usually able to work other units within the childbirth center when the need arises. This weekend was one of those times, the NICU had a high census and needed many nurses. Labor and Delivery had only a few laboring patients and only needed a few, so since I am cross-trained, I was ”floated” to use my skills caring for a couple preemies. There can be alarms, alerts, and sounds going off throughout the day and we need to learn what each sound means so we respond to the babies appropriately.

I had a couple of tinies today. Adorable. Itty bitty diapers and itty bitty bottles to feed them. They have tiny BP cuffs too, that would wrap around my thumb. They get fed every three hours, and just before they get fed, the nurse warms the feeding, does a complete set of vitals, assesses the baby, changes the diaper, rotates the pulse oximeter to the other foot, and measures the abdominal circumference. All this care is clustered so that in between feedings the baby can just rest and grow, without overstimulation.

These little ones are still learning to take a bottle. They are often young and small enough that they can only do part of a feeding by bottle and the remainder goes into a large syringe on a pump with a tube that goes through the nose down into the stomach, passively nourishing the baby while they sleep so they can grow. Overstimulated preemies often lose weight instead of gaining.

I have enjoyed the last couple days in the NICU with the little ones. In Labor and Delivery, I don’t often get the chance to hold babies, or feed them, it’s my job to make sure the parents do. I was given the opportunity to bottle feed until they fell asleep and had to finish their feedings passively. I watched one try to eat in his sleep, but he started to dream, and I laughed out loud at the faces and smiles he made, he was sleeping too heavily to suck on the bottle. What sweet day for me!

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