Please know that you are not alone in this, and that many parents have struggled with those same feelings.  We asked parents who have spent time in our NICU over the holidays for some tips, and this is what they told us:

1. Be clear and open with your family and friends about what you need and what you can handle.  If you feel up to being with people, great! If not, that’s absolutely fine too.  Remind people that this is not the way things will be forever; it’s just what you need right now.
2. Remember that it’s cold, flu and RSV season.  Big crowded events may not be the best choice for you if you’re trying to stay healthy.  Also be very clear with anyone who wants to visit you and your baby in the hospital that they must be healthy.  Otherwise take advantage of technology (FaceTime, Skype, Facebook chat) to connect with loved ones.
3. Find ways to celebrate that are meaningful to you and that feel good to you.  In Sunnybrook’s NICU there are many holiday events for families; if you feel like participating you and your family members are welcome to everything.  It’s also okay if you don’t feel like participating – our feelings won’t be hurt.
4. Let the medical team support you if family and friends aren’t listening to your messages about what you and your baby needs.  We have handouts and letters that can help educate, and we are always happy to chat with your extended circle if that helps you.   The Canadian Premature Babies Foundation also has some helpful information online about common winter illnesses that you can share with your circle.
5. Make memories with your baby, your care team and your family.  These first holidays with your baby may not be what you expected, but you can still find special moments to turn into lasting memories.  Dressing your baby up in special holiday clothes or with holiday blankets, turning NICU items into ornaments, or singing holiday songs to your baby are all small things you can do to make the holiday season feel special again.

From all of us at Sunnybrook NICU, we wish you a peaceful and joyful holiday season, and a very happy new year!

The post Holidays in the NICU: Tips for parents appeared first on Your Health Matters.

This amazing mural was done by the team at Northside Hospital Forsyth, Cumming, Georgia. Thanks for sharing!

What worked?

I think the education tips for staff and parents were amazing. It really got the conversation going for all of our staff – instead of just the ones who were already invested.  ~ Bonnie from Kelowna General, British Columbia

The Grandparent Challenge was super fun and spontaneous. Not sure you can buy that kind of enthusiasm.  ~ Luisa from Sunnybrook HSC, Ontario

I did a survey of grad parents and gathered some very powerful words that I shared with staff – this has been identified in our post-event survey as a very powerful motivator to get those babies onto their parents’ chests! ~ Joanna at Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, New Hampshire

We used a “I’m ready to Kangaroo!” laminated sign at each bedside. During rounds, eligibility for kangaroo care was discussed, thus making a VISIBLE team decision for each baby. ~ Tammy from Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, New Hampshire

Probably the most important outcome of our kangaroo-a-thon was the increased parent engagement on the unit. It was very rewarding to read the loving messages that many parents added to their infants’ kangaroos that they posted on the wall every time they did KC. Another highlight was the increased participation of dads on the unit and it was very rewarding to see them holding their infants in KC. It was also just what our unit needed to create the momentum that we needed to increase the use of our new wraps that had been acquired and introduced prior to the kangaroo-a-thon, but were not being used on a wide-scale yet.  ~ Stacy from Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, Loma Linda, California.

We recently installed Roku boxes to the large tv screens in each pod, allowing us to personalize messages to parents and staff. They went live during the kangaroo a thon. I did notice that the hours of KC increased after this was up. We kept a running total of hours of KC and encouraged more of it. It worked!  ~  April from Woman’s Hospital, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

We had more parents in the unit and the families visited for longer periods of time. We saw infants in one weekend improve in their respiratory status going from HFOV to Conventional Ventilators, Ventilators to SiPap , one patient went from ventilator to HFNC all in one weekend. We saw weight gains on patients who had been maintaining, we had improved thermoregulations, we had happier parents and babies. ~ Kristin from Valley Children’s Healthcare NICU, Madera, California

The daily raffle draw for prizes (one for staff and one for parents) was a big motivator. We saw parents become more proactive and asking their nurse for KC time.  ~ Ashley from Erlanger Health  System NICU, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Our Neonatologist (and Medical Director) wore a kangaroo costume I bought for morning multidisciplinary rounds. What you can’t quite grasp is the fact that he is the LAST person anyone would think would wear a kangaroo costume. Everyone LOVED it and it was a great kick off to our Kangaroo-a-thon.  ~ Amy from Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I think the best part for me was when I went to collect the sheets at the end of the challenge and one dad said “Aw man, I can’t write on the sheet anymore? I wanted to get more hours than the whole sheet contained.” ~ Heather from Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial NICU, Orillia, Ontario. (Last year’s Level 2 winner! )

What could change?

Our neonatologist suggests that there be a category for “koala’ cuddling for volunteers. ~ Bonnie from Kelowna General, Kelowna, British Columbia.

We would love some funding! How did the rest of you go about getting any funding for your event?  Maybe we could have a running tally with all the hospitals on a website all together next year? And maybe a chat room where we could all be having a dialogue during the event? I think that would be really interesting.  ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s, Quebec.

Level II specific education, We don’t have micro prems or long term vents so some of the education points, while interesting, were not as applicable. ~ The team from Peterborough, Ontario.

Find ways of communicating together during the challenge to cheer each other on! ~ multiple c enters

Find better ways of tallying hours.  ~ multiple centers

Start promoting earlier and bringing more team  members into the project.  This project really relies on an interdisciplinary approach ~ multiple centers

It’s hard to keep momentum going for two weeks. The first week is GREAT – how can we keep that going? ~ multiple centers

We also have a number of babies who have been in the NICU for over 1 month and many of 3 months, some over 6 and 12 months! So older babies can be challenging to do kangaroo care with, but we suggested to them to just do chest to chest holding. ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.

What next?

We are going to have a skills week set up for staff to practice transferring a baby on the jet, and also have staff practice having the parent pick the baby up out of the bed versus staff hand the baby to them. We are also going to be doing a year long incentive program with quarterly Rangers tickets, T-shirts, and other nurse staffing prizes (no float pass, no weekends for one schedule, etc.)  ~ Heather from Cook Children’s, Texas.

We plan on challenging some other Quebec hospitals next year. The response on our unit was amazing! ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.

I think it will be helpful to have extra kangaroo champions available periodically to encourage and support the bedside staff. ~ Debbie from Community Memorial Hospital, Venture, California.

Education of parents!! The nurses are all for KC but some of the parents haven’t bought into yet. ~ Dawn from Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center, Reno, Nevada

If there was a way to find out how other units were doing or how they had done this might have helped with the competitive spirit of our group. We have some very competitive nurses on our unit. ~ Trisha from Women’s Hospital, Greenboro, North Carolina.

I think our docs and nnps could still be bigger zealots and explain to parents why KC is so important. Ask parents every day on rounds; remind them again about the importance…Parents want to do what’s best for their children and we need to teach them about this. ~ Howard from Salem Oregon (last year’s winner!)

What interesting things did you learn (and/or did we learn from you)?

It was surprising to observe how competitive the families were with this challenge, and how they were interested in recording their hours daily.  ~ Donna from North York General, Ontario

We consider ALL of our babies eligible for skin to skin holding. Vents, chest tubes, umbilical lines are no barrier. The only time we stop is if a baby isn’t tolerating it well.  ~ Sheryl from Memorial Children’s Hospital, Indiana.

The eye-opening moment was realizing that kangaroo care is not only for pre-term but for term babies. We are going to concentrate on supporting kangaroo care not only the first few days of life but ongoing during the entire hospital stay. ~ Sandra, Northside Forsyth Hospital, Georgia.

Our longest baby held was 17 hours in 24 hours. ~ Lynn from IU Health North NICU Riley, Carmel, Indiana.

One nurse came to me to tell me how a baby was grunty and after a few minutes of skin to skin with the father, the baby settled and the vital signs were normal. She stated that this episode might have made her a believer in skin to skin. If one nurse was able to see the benefits to skin to skin than to me, this challenge was a success. ~ Lindsay from Thunder Bay NICU, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

We encourage skin to skin in the Operating Room if baby is stable, and also with any blood draws we will do skin to skin. We are now starting to engage the lab in this process also. ~ Margaret from Guelph General Hospital, Guelph, Ontario.

This year we had our L&D and LDRP units participate at the same time as us. They kept their own log sheets and educated patients and visitors on the importance of Kangaroo Care. ~ Diane from St Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

– – – – – – – –

Thank you all so much for sharing these thoughts and experiences with us.  What a remarkable community this is!  The generosity and dedication of all the Kangaroo Challenge participants is inspiring.  We would love to hear from you if you have suggestions for how to make things better or how to address some of the issues mentioned above.  We will continue to post and share what we learn, and are eager to keep this conversation going.

If you are wondering where your hospital stood in the grand scheme of things, here’s a graph that shows all participants and their totals (de-identified).   PDF: KC2016 (1) 

We know our American friends have big barriers to overcome regarding parental presence (i.e. different policies related to maternity and parental leave), so we are pretty impressed with their results.

Thanks again for being great sports, wonderful teams, and amazing people!

Happy holding!

The post More words from winners! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

This is the first year that the Alberta Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) has participated in the Kangaroo Challenge. We are the surgical level 3 NICU located in Calgary, Alberta that operates as a single family room style unit.

A big highlight of the Challenge for us was that one of our premature and surgical patients on the unit was kangarooed for 28 hours straight by both parents as they took shifts.

One of our biggest challenges, as a surgical unit, was being able to accommodate parents holding their babies while doing our routine surgical care. We frequently were changing ostomy bags on babies while parents continued to do skin-to-skin care.

Another challenge we faced was parental presence in the NICU. We are the surgical NICU for all of Southern Alberta which means that a lot of our babies’ families are from surrounding areas and cannot be on the unit all the time. We are very understanding of the struggle parents face to try to be in the NICU with their infants as well as fulfilling their obligations at home. Families who were providing kangaroo care earned a kangaroo to place on their baby’s door for every hour they did skin-to-skin care which was a great morale booster and cultivated some friendly competition between families on the unit.

Unfortunately, we also had some babies on the unit that were accumulating very few kangaroos on their door. It was very important to us, as a unit, to demonstrate that we value the importance of positive touch for all babies, regardless of how often their family could visit. One idea presented by one of our team members was to print off koalas to place on the door of babies that were held by nurses or volunteers. These koalas were not included in the total of kangaroo hours we did as a unit but helped us in our goal to demonstrate to families and staff that we are active in providing meaningful touch to all infants.

The committee that decided to lead the Kangaroo Challenge at the Alberta Children’s Hospital NICU was the Parent Partnership in Care Committee. One of our main goals in the committee is to work in a partnership with our patients’ families as we assist them in becoming the primary caregiver and advocate to their ill infant.

One of the big changes that we noticed during the duration of the challenge was how families began to visibly become more comfortable in providing newborn care to their infants. Parents noted that they were able to more clearly identify their baby’s likes and dislikes, along with their baby’s changes in breathing and stability. It was obvious to us that as the NICU families spent more time proving skin-to-skin care to their infants, they were able to become more active in their baby’s day-to-day NICU care.

Though the Kangaroo Challenge is finished, we hope to keep the momentum going strong on our unit. Our goal this year was to simply open the dialogue between the NICU staff and families about the importance of skin-to-skin care for their infants.

We wanted to see parents asking for skin-to-skin care with their babies as well as NICU staff routinely offering it. Our team was blown away by the amount of participation and enthusiasm by the families in the NICU and it contributed to some excellent energy on the unit. Although we haven’t gotten together as a team yet to discuss our goals for next year, I think we are all believers that with passion and knowledge from the staff, we will be able to engage our NICU families and exceed our 3.5 hour/baby/day total from this year.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us – we LOVE the idea of a baby being kangarooed for 28 hours straight!  We send a hearty congratulations to the amazing team at Alberta Children’s, our 2016 Level 3 Kangaroo Challenge Champion!

The post Words from a winner (part 2) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

First up: Donna from the winning Level 2 unit, North York General Hospital (Toronto, Ontario)

I would say that the biggest challenge we overcame was surrounding skin-to-skin time being dependent on ‘do up time’ for the infants.  We would have several families sitting by the bedside, reading or on their tablets, but not holding their sleeping infants.  Some were afraid to hold, or didn’t realize that they could.  Once they started doing skin-to-skin, they so enjoyed it and didn’t have to ask any more … they expected to hold!

Our staff was used to encouraging parents to hold their infants, but usually around these ‘do up times.’  With the education and promotion of the Kangaroo Challenge, they realized that any time was Kangaroo Time, as long as the infant was stable.  We used the Kangaroo Toolkit provided by Sunnybrook to post pictures all around the unit, as well as their ‘Benefits of skin-to skin’ for Mom, Dad and Baby.  We also posted educational information in the Parent Lounge, common areas, such as the hand washing sinks, as well as the entrance door to the NICU to educate all.  We used the Daily Parent and Staff Tips and posted them on our white board in the hallway.  We created an interprofessional working group that met weekly to plan for this event, which was a great idea, as teamwork made this a possibility.  We also involved our Corporate Communications Department to promote our event on our Corporate Twitter feed.

We decided not to make individual kangaroos and hand out to families depending on the time they held, as we didn’t want to make any of the families feel bad, if for whatever reason they were not able to be present and hold.  We kept this event positive and fun for all.

We are going to keep this education going by leaving the posters and educational sayings up, as there are always new families coming into the NICU and we know that the benefits of skin-to-skin do not stop when the Challenge is over, as they last a lifetime.

Our longest cuddle was 10 hrs.    Our families were a very motivated and competitive group with 1 family holding for 9 hrs. and 40 minutes, 1 family for 9 hours and 4 families for 8 hours.  We really didn’t expect this, but once the Challenge commenced they were so eager to start!  The day the Challenge ended one of our Moms said, “Great, now I can give him a bath.  I skipped the bath so that I could get more Kangaroo hours in!”  We all had a great laugh.

We so enjoyed this Challenge and thank you for including us. We hope to surpass our goal for next year and keep ‘The Crown’, but realize that all NICUs have great staff members who provide nothing but the best evidenced-based care for their families in the NICU.  We are all winners in my mind!

Donna – thank you so much for sharing these wise words with us. You have an exceptional team at North York, and on behalf of all the babies and families you help, thanks for your wonderful work!

The post Words from a winner (part 1) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

You have been so patient as we’ve tallied up all the numbers you’ve sent in, and now it’s time for us to announce our winners. Out of 74 North American hospitals and 21 Australian hospitals, we are very excited to say (drumroll please) that the winners of the 2016 International Kangaroo Care Challenge are:

Level 2 winner:  North York General Hospital (Toronto, Ontario) with an average of 4.1 hours of holding per baby per day! 

 Level 3/4 Winner:  Alberta Children’s Hospital (Calgary, Alberta) with an average of 3.5 hours of holding per baby per day!

These numbers are fantastic, especially when we think of what they represent … hours upon hours of brain-boosting, attachment-building, stress-busting kangaroo cuddles!  The average length of time spent holding in Level 2 units was 1.74 hours per baby per day, and in Level 3 it was 0.98 hours, so our winners can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Over the next few days we will be sharing some tips and tricks from the winners and from other units who accomplished some spectacular feats.  So please check back with us soon so we can continue to learn and improve together. Until then … happy holding!

The post We have a winner! (Two, actually) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Today is the 5^th International Kangaroo Care Day, an incredible celebration of the power of skin to skin care. Created by the inspiring Yamile Jackson, a preemie mom and entrepreneur, it has grown into a true world-wide movement.

At Sunnybrook, our Kangaroo-a-thon concludes today, and we send a huge thank you to all the staff members, parents and babies who worked together to make it a huge success. We send an especially big thanks to our breastfeeding resource nurse, Luisa King, who has put in innumerable hours making sure this year’s was bigger and better than ever. The stats have not yet been tabulated, but we think based on the numbers so far that we may have bested our all-time record, AND managed to break new ground by ensuring many babies were held for more than 8 hours each day. We are so happy.

We are also thrilled by how our friends at other units have done with their Kangaroo-a-thons as part of the Kangaroo Challenge, in which units around the world engage in a friendly kangaroo care competition. We have seen amazing coverage in the news and on social media. If you’re on Twitter, you can check in on the action with #kangaroocare, #kangaroochallenge or #kangarooathon. We have also seen a satisfying number of medical professionals dressed up as kangaroos, which is something we will encourage our staff to do next year.

Our partner, the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, has worked hard to bring the Challenge to parents, and have posted some wonderful updates on the CPBF blog. (We’ve already watched the beautiful photo montage they created about a billion times).  They will also be offering up a lovely embroidered kangaroo to the winning unit; we won’t know who that is until the end of the month, but we will be sure to keep you posted.

We hope all of you out there enjoy today. If you are in the NICU with your baby, know that the gift of your touch is powerful beyond measure. If you are a staff member who helps reunite babies and parents, we offer you our sincere thanks. You are transforming lives with your work. And if you are home with your loved ones, give them some big hugs. They aren’t just for preemies, you know?!

Happy holding!

The post Happy 5th International Kangaroo Care Day! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Our Sunnybrook Kangaroo-a-thon launched today with a big party and a whole lot of cuddling.  A dedicated volunteer crocheter made kangaroos for each and every family in our unit, and one of our breastfeeding resource nurses contributed the kangaroo cookies.  We decorated the whole unit, made kangaroo colouring books for siblings, and are creating a whole “Thank You” wall for our wonderful staff members. So much fun!

So we might be just feeling the impact of all the sugar … or it might be that we are very excited because more than SEVENTY FIVE hospitals have signed on to the Kangaroo Challenge!  That is not a typo.  We are so happy to welcome all of these hospitals in partnership; what a wonderful collaboration this is!

Speaking of collaboration … our partner, the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, is opening up some fun kangaroo-related opportunities for parents. You can transform your Facebook or Twitter profile picture as part of the Twibbon Campaign, and there will be more kangaroo goodness on the CPBF blog.

We are also so happy to welcome our friends at the Miracle Babies Foundation, who are once again leading the way and celebrating Kangaroo Care across Australia.

If your NICU has not yet signed up … it’s never too late! Check out the resources available at our Kangaroo Challenge page and send us an email if you’d like to participate.

We’ll keep you posted on our progress. Until then … happy holding!

The post Let the (Kangaroo) games begin! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

The PP stands for Preemie Power!

At our unit, we were able to hand out lovely WPD goodies, including bibs and pins from the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, and custom made superhero capes from Loved From Head to Toe.   Our current NICU families came together and had cake and celebrated their wonderful babies and their equally wonderful accomplishments. Graduate families joined a multi-hospital celebration held downtown near the CN Tower. The location was chosen because the CN Tower, as part of the World Prematurity Day Global Illumination Project, was one of hundreds of international monuments that was glowing purple to honour preemies.  Thank you so much to the organizers and to the wonderful families who came out to celebrate.

Way to go, CN Tower!

If you’d like to see more beautiful buildings lit up in purple, read inspiring family stories, and find out about what other NICUs did across Canada, we encourage you to visit the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation’s Facebook page, which is filling up with amazing photographs and updates. And last but DEFINITELY not least – please take a moment and watch this amazing, incredible video made by a graduate family from our NICU.  It’s absolutely beautiful and it captures so much about the NICU experience in a few short moments.

Until next year … happy World Prematurity Day, and thank you for your support!

The post Oh, what a day that was! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

We think it’s really important for parents to have the chance to dress their babies up if they feel like it, so we take care of all the logistics and they bring the creativity. Every year we are lucky enough to receive beautiful donated hats, often from graduate NICU parents or grandparents, and the hat is often the inspiration for a costume. For example, you could be a football, or a wise little owl …

Or you could be Minnie or Mickey!

We always have a number of ballerinas and superheroes, and perhaps the reason why (apart from the fact that they’re cute and very appropriate for our babies!) is that it’s pretty easy to make these costumes quickly and safely with easy-to-find materials. For example, it takes about 15 minutes for a non-crafty person to make a tiny tutu for a baby ballerina.

You start with a piece of tulle that’s about 10 cm long and 4 cm wide, and you fold it in half. You then tie the tulle around a ribbon by poking the ends back through the loop you created. We used kind of a fancy ribbon here with extra trim, but plain ribbon or elastic works well too, as long as it’s washable.

You do this with more strips of tulle (no need to cut precisely) until you have a nice puffy tutu, and then you can close it up with either velcro dots or a quick knot.

Here’s what it looks like on a real baby …

This year at our first session we had a parent who is a real artist, and she created this in about 10 minutes with a blank onesie and some fabric markers. She’s really looking forward to busting this out at rounds on Halloween!

And finally we had another parent who was a whizz at cutting out felt and turning it into something amazing …

So it probably doesn’t surprise you, after seeing all of this,  if we say we can’t wait for Halloween! We hope these photos have inspired you to celebrate (if you choose) wherever you are.  So happy Halloween, and don’t forget to save us some candy

The post A Halloween How-to for the NICU appeared first on Your Health Matters.

We are so thankful that so many family members came; it takes courage to step into the circle and grieve together, and we hope that it brings some peace and healing. We also send thanks to Rebecca Collett who shared her glorious voice with us, to the parents who so beautifully shared their stories and read poems, to Kelly for organizing everything so perfectly, and to Brenda our chaplain and Helen our wonderful music therapist who led such a meaningful and lovely program.

Brenda introduced a new and wonderful element to our event this year; she asked everyone to take a small painted stone, and then shared these instructions:

Keep me as your remembrance stone, to hold as a small comfort. When you’re ready to let me go, give me back to nature.

We then concluded with our butterfly ritual, in which every parent wrote a message on a butterfly and hung it on our tree. The wind tried to shake our butterflies loose but Meghan wasn’t letting any of them go! (And thank you Meghan for taking on butterfly duty!)

This next poem wasn’t included in today’s ceremony, and Stephen Spender was not writing about babies, but it does come to mind when thinking of these children and their wonderful families. The entire poem can be found here, but please read this small excerpt.

From I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great …

The post The truly great appeared first on Your Health Matters.