Anyone have preemie/newborn questions?? I am an NICU nurse and would love to give info to parents..

[kelley1975]

Title says it all........

 

[MonkeyPie]

My best friend is also a NICU nurse - what a rewarding job!

 

[noelwr]

what a tough job, too!

I have a question. my mom says both my brother and I were born a month early (we are not twins; 6 years apart). he had to go in an incubator and had some heart problems so had to be observed. (apologies that I am not using the correct medical terms.) she said that I, on the other hand, was very healthy and could go home right away. is that possible that a baby born after 8 months is well enough to go home or do you think she may have remembered it incorrectly? she does sometimes tend to get her stories mixed up.

which then all leads me to my next question. if my brother and I were both born prematurely, is it likely that my own baby will be premature, or is there no relation?

thanks so much and sorry I am not asking harder questions. I''m still new to this pregnancy thing (at 8 weeks now).

 

[phoenixgirl]

Noel, I was born a month early and got to go home right away.

The funny thing is that according to my mom, I was 6 weeks early because my siblings were both 10 days late, so she added 10 days to my due date and expected me then. But my official due date was May 18 and I was born April 18.

 

[noelwr]

phoenixgirl - I was born in April, too.

do you live in Phoenix? I am visiting there in Feb. if you have kids and can recommend some good shops to buy baby stuff, I''d love to hear it. please let me know and I''ll start a new thread so I stop hijacking this one.

 

[MustangGal]

noelwr - I''m in Phoenix

, what kind of shops would you be interrested in?

 

[anchor31]

Hey kelley - Thanks for offering to share your knowledge.

You''re welcome to pop in the pregnant PSers thread when you feel you have something to contribute!

I do have a question: They say that when your water breaks, you have to go to the hospital right away. How much time is actually dangerous for an infection? I''m asking because my husband and I only have one car and he uses it to go to work, so I''m wondering if I''d be okay waiting for him to come home if my water breaks while he''s at work, or I should call a cab and go to the hospital right away? I''m 38 weeks 2 days, so not much longer now!

 

[curlygirl]

anchor, I'm not Kelley nor am I a NICU nurse but I've given birth to 2 babies so just wanted to tell you what I've learned until Kelley checks in. You do NOT have to rush to the hospital as soon as your water breaks with your first baby. You will be fine to wait until DH gets home. Use that time to get your last minute stuff in your bag, take a shower, time contractions, bake cookies, etc. I don't think infection becomes an issue till you've been laboring that way for a looong time with no progress--like 24 hours. If it was your second baby, the advice is different because labor tends to move faster in consecutive pregnancies. Get to the hospital immediately!! With my first, I labored at home for a while until the contractions were unbearable. Got to the hospital and my water broke there. I quickly went to 5cm, got my epidural and within a few hours, I was giving birth. From start to finish, it was about 8 hours. With #2, water broke at home with contractions coming right on top of each other, rushed to hospital, got to 7-8cms in no time, got epidural and gave birth all within 3.5 hours! So I think you'll be ok to wait a while unless the contractions get really bad. Good luck, it'll be your turn in no time!!!

 

[Mrs Mitchell]

Anchor, I'm not a nurse either, but from what I know, it depends on your situation. When my waters broke there was meconium in the amniotic fluid. If that happens you need to go to hospital asap so they can monitor your baby. If the fluid is clear, things are ok (generally) but if the fluid is stained brown or greenish, that may be meconium.

I'd suggest phoning the hospital / your midwife if your waters break, see what there advice is. If the amniotic fluid had been clear, I would have stayed at home until the contractions got to a certain time apart (depending on how far I was from the hospital allowing for traffic etc).

Jen

 

[lucyandroger]

I have a nosey SIL question

My SIL is 21 weeks pregnant with her first (and my first niece

) and has borderline high blood pressure. Her OB mentioned that if the high blood pressure persisted, she wanted to induce my SIL 2 weeks before the due date. My brother and SIL live an hour from the hospital and my brother thinks the OB may want to induce because of the convenience factor for everyone, including the OB, getting to the hospital. My SIL actually wants to get induced 2 weeks early so she can make sure her sister is there for the birth. My brother is concerned about what effect this will have on the baby.

Any thoughts? Is it normal to discuss inducing this early in the pregnancy over borderline high blood pressure (some visits high, some visits on the high side of normal)? What effect could inducing 2 weeks early have on the baby?

Thanks!

 

[Tacori E-ring]

Date: 12/18/2009 9:27:51 AM
Author: noelwr
what a tough job, too!

which then all leads me to my next question. if my brother and I were both born prematurely, is it likely that my own baby will be premature, or is there no relation?

I am not in the medical field but I asked my OB the same question because my sister was 2 weeks early, I was 3.5 weeks early and my brother was 3 months early. He told me there was no relation and it turns out (later when I talked to my mom) there were medical reasons we were all early. I thought for SURE I would go before my due date but I was induced a week LATE. Figures! Just an interesting fact, my baby was breached for a LONG time. She didn''t flip until the last minute. My OB asked if I was breached as well b/c I guess there is a connection. Go figure!

 

[neatfreak]

Date: 12/18/2009 11:27:02 AM
Author: lucyandroger
I have a nosey SIL question

My SIL is 21 weeks pregnant with her first (and my first niece

) and has borderline high blood pressure. Her OB mentioned that if the high blood pressure persisted, she wanted to induce my SIL 2 weeks before the due date. My brother and SIL live an hour from the hospital and my brother thinks the OB may want to induce because of the convenience factor for everyone, including the OB, getting to the hospital. My SIL actually wants to get induced 2 weeks early so she can make sure her sister is there for the birth. My brother is concerned about what effect this will have on the baby.


Any thoughts? Is it normal to discuss inducing this early in the pregnancy over borderline high blood pressure (some visits high, some visits on the high side of normal)? What effect could inducing 2 weeks early have on the baby?


Thanks!

While the doctor could be doing it because of convenience it also could simply be that he is preparing them for the very distinct possibility of her developing preeclampsia. Which can be life threatening for both mom and baby and the only "cure" is to deliver the baby.

High blood pressure this early in the pregnancy isn''t good-so the doctor is likely just preparing them just in case it develops into pre-e and she needs to be delivered early. BUT I do think it''s odd that the doctor would want to induce 2 weeks early just because...if she developed pre-e obviously that is one thing but I am not sure why otherwise she would need to be induced early...maybe Kelley knows more than I do about that.

I also think inducing that early for any reason other than medical necessity is pretty irresponsible IMO. The baby could have problems with their lungs or other things like that. Likely the baby would be fine-but you just never know. I really hope their doctor will flat out tell them no in all honesty. It just isn''t right.

Anyway sorry for rambling. I had twins and had high blood pressure (for me) throughout a lot of my pregnancy so there was a LOT of talk about possibly needing to deliver early if my BP went up any further or they found more protein in my urine. So I''m familiar!

 

[Blenheim]

Anchor, I''d ask your practice about their exact guidelines about what they want you to do if your water breaks. WHO recommends that labor start within 72 hours of water breaking and the AAP recommends 24 hours; I''m not sure what the Canadian guidelines are. The risk of infection is much lower if absolutely nothing goes in your vag, even sterile exam gloves. My midwife and I chose to go with the 72 hour WHO guideline with the understanding that we would do no internal exams and I wasn''t going to get into the bath until labor was well established, and my first internal exam ended up being at 9 cm. Baby was born 43 hours after my water broke. I think you''d be fine calling your husband and waiting for him to come and pick you up. Of course, this is assuming clear water - if there''s any sign of meconium, you do want to head to the hospital right away as it is a sign of distress.

 

[Pandora II]

Anchor - the advice I was given was if there was meconium in the water then to go straight to L&D, otherwise to phone in and then take my time.

My waters broke at 11am and DH and I drifted down to the hospital around 2pm. They gave me a pad to wear for 20 minutes to confirm it was amniotic fluid, then I waited a couple of hours to see the OB during which time contractions started. The OB told me to go home - no baths, no sex, taking care after using the bathroom etc - and that if I wasn''t already in full labour they would start antibiotics and induce me after 36 hours, and she booked me in for a possible induction the next evening.

When I finally went in to the L&D room the next day I was heading for the 36 hours, so they put me on an antibiotic IV straight away. They didn''t do an internal until 40 hours after my waters broke to avoid any risk of infection.

 

[radiantquest]

This may be silly, but I was watching a program today and a woman delivered her babies at I think it was 31 weeks. Now I know that they are taking really good care of babies at the NCIU, but if a baby would be fully developed at 40 weeks then why do premature babies have to stay in the hospital longer than the remainder of the gestation? I mean I understand if they have problems, but why if they are under developed does it take so much longer in the NICU?

 

[neatfreak]

Date: 12/19/2009 8:03:57 PM
Author: radiantquest
This may be silly, but I was watching a program today and a woman delivered her babies at I think it was 31 weeks. Now I know that they are taking really good care of babies at the NCIU, but if a baby would be fully developed at 40 weeks then why do premature babies have to stay in the hospital longer than the remainder of the gestation? I mean I understand if they have problems, but why if they are under developed does it take so much longer in the NICU?

Most of the time they don''t. Unless there are more complications-most preemies get to go home around their original due date.

 

[anchor31]

Date: 12/19/2009 10:42:32 PM
Author: neatfreak

Date: 12/19/2009 8:03:57 PM
Author: radiantquest
This may be silly, but I was watching a program today and a woman delivered her babies at I think it was 31 weeks. Now I know that they are taking really good care of babies at the NCIU, but if a baby would be fully developed at 40 weeks then why do premature babies have to stay in the hospital longer than the remainder of the gestation? I mean I understand if they have problems, but why if they are under developed does it take so much longer in the NICU?

Most of the time they don''t. Unless there are more complications-most preemies get to go home around their original due date.

It probably depends on how healthy they are... My sister and I were born at 30 weeks. My sister was 3lbs3oz and stayed in the NICU 6 weeks; I was 3lbs1oz and stayed 7 weeks.

 

[swingirl]

When will kelley1975 return to this this thread she started to answer the questions?

 

[butterfly 17]

Date: 12/18/2009 9:27:51 AM
Author: noelwr
what a tough job, too!


I have a question. my mom says both my brother and I were born a month early (we are not twins; 6 years apart). he had to go in an incubator and had some heart problems so had to be observed. (apologies that I am not using the correct medical terms.) she said that I, on the other hand, was very healthy and could go home right away. is that possible that a baby born after 8 months is well enough to go home or do you think she may have remembered it incorrectly? she does sometimes tend to get her stories mixed up.


which then all leads me to my next question. if my brother and I were both born prematurely, is it likely that my own baby will be premature, or is there no relation?


thanks so much and sorry I am not asking harder questions. I''m still new to this pregnancy thing (at 8 weeks now).

Hi Noelwr,
I am not Kelley, but I can answer your questions. A baby at 36 weeks gestational age (8 months) can definitely be born healthy and ready to go home. At our hospital, our weight and age requirements are that the infant is 1800 gms and 35 weeks gestation at time of discharge.
37 weeks is considered full term, so you were just shy of being a full term baby. If you were born at 36 weeks and 6 days, then you would have been just one day shy of being a full termer.

You and your brother were twins, so there is a higher percentage with multiple births of premature delivery. This doesn''t necessarily mean that the same thing will happen to you. Every pregnancy is different, some women carry to full term and then the next pregnancy they deliver early. There are so many factors that play into that, including number of pregnancies, carrying multiples, age, smoking, drinking, drugs, cervical length, etc.

Good luck!

 

[butterfly 17]

Date: 12/19/2009 8:03:57 PM
Author: radiantquest
This may be silly, but I was watching a program today and a woman delivered her babies at I think it was 31 weeks. Now I know that they are taking really good care of babies at the NCIU, but if a baby would be fully developed at 40 weeks then why do premature babies have to stay in the hospital longer than the remainder of the gestation? I mean I understand if they have problems, but why if they are under developed does it take so much longer in the NICU?

Hi,
this is not necessarily true, most infants go home prior to their due date. Unfortunately, some infants don''t fair as well as others. This happens a lot with twins, where one twin generally does slightly better than the other one and I have never seen a set of twins go home on the same exact day, unless of course they were full termers. It''s actually better for the parents when we send home one twin at a time. It gives them time to adjust to having one baby before having to now deal with two of them, but if both were healthy enough to go home at the same time, we would have to do it.

At 31 weeks and being twins, they would most likely be dealing with respiratory issues, possible infection, feeding issues, thermoregulation issues, possible twin to twin transfusion syndrome, etc.

There are a number of things that can happen to a premature infant, which I won''t go into full detail, but in general, infants born 33 weeks or less will have respiratory distress due to lung immaturity.

 

[butterfly 17]

BTW, i am not Kelley, but I am a NICU nurse , so even though I know she started this thread, I felt bad that there were some questions that haven't been answered and this is why I replied. lol
I am sure once Kelley returns she will respond to any questions, but feel free to ask and I am going to post a little history later on for those interested.