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!

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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!

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Inspired by amazing events at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital and St Barnabas Medical Centre, we held our first Kangaroo-a-thon in 2013. This year, we decided we wanted to go a bit bigger, so we issued a challenge to other units. Could they hold their own event before May 15 (International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day) and could they beat either our initial goal of 605 hours of holding, or our 2015 total of 1028 hours?

We had hoped to get maybe 5 or 6 hospitals engaged, and we had a secret stretch goal of 10.  As of today we have 31 hospitals across North America participating in the challenge, and we couldn’t be happier.

We will know who has “won” the challenge on or about May 15, but the truth is in this sort of challenge everyone wins. The babies sure win, by getting to spend all that time with their parents. The parents win for the same reason. And all the wonderful people in all of these NICUs are certainly champions, because they have all put time, effort and passion into reuniting babies with their families.

The winners will get bragging rights, something delicious (we haven’t decided what yet), and this amazing flag which was donated by our friend and all-round amazing human Dr. Jim Gray.

We will keep you all posted on the results, but for now, we would like to share this wonderful update from our friends at McMaster. They do such groundbreaking work, and the way they embraced the challenge is really inspiring.

 Our Kangaroo-A-Thon concluded at  midnight last night and was a huge success. Thank you to Sunnybrook for the challenge and the wonderful resources provided.

 Our goal was 800 hours; we finished with a total of 873 hours.

 Last year, we completed extensive education with our staff related to providing developmentally supportive care to our patients. The education focused on protected sleep, cue based feeding, and skin to skin care. Following our education, we adapted our skin to skin policy and changed how  we viewed ‘eligibility’. With this, we saw a marked increase in skin to skin throughout the unit but needed something that would further encourage skin to skin and help break down some barriers that we were seeing. The Kangaroo-a-thon was our answer!

 We encouraged our staff through further education during the challenge (a gift basket draw helped as well!) and used the challenge as a spring board for educating our parents (who also had a gift basket draw!) on the importance of skin to skin. With this education came increased advocacy from parents, and thus, increased skin to skin in the unit!! We have broken down many barriers during this challenge; here are some of the highlights. 25 weeks gestation with cardiac defects, UAC, UVC, intubated partaking with Hand Hug on day 1 and Skin to Skin on Day 2 and every day since; Post-OP on HFO with lines partaking with Hand Hug on day 1 Post-OP and Skin to Skin on Day 2 Post-OP; Grandmother performing Skin to Skin daily; new staff partaking on first solo vent shift by aiding mother to perform modified Skin to Skin pre-op of a very unstable patient followed by Skin to Skin Post-OP day 2; open neural tube defect partaking in Skin to Skin!

Again, thank you so much for your initiative on this, what a beautiful challenge!! We are looking forward to next year!!

Also, we were featured on our local news cast and thought you would be interested! 

Thank you so much to the wonderful team at McMaster for sharing their story; even before we have overall results we can say you are champions in our eyes.  We will keep sharing updates from other participating hospitals as they roll in. Until then … happy holding!

The post Do you Kangaroo? An update on our Kangaroo Challenge appeared first on Your Health Matters.

To the infection control experts who helped us figure out how to do it safely. Just because Santa occasionally wears a gown and gloves doesn’t mean he’s not Santa!

To the expert knitters and sewers who made beautiful hats and blankets for our babies.

To the lovely, lovely woman who asked if she could donate stockings (FILLED with goodies!) for all our families.

To the graduate family who donated storybooks, colouring books and hand lotion for siblings and parents.

To the graduate families who brought in delicious food for our family and staff holiday party, and who came to support our current NICU families.

To the nurses who helped us approach each family ahead of time and ask if they were interested in a Santa visit.

And again to the nurses and RTs and other team members who helped when Santa came to each baby’s room, and made it possible to take gorgeous pictures.

To our wonderful photographer, Doug, who takes such amazing pictures and creates such beautiful memories for our families.

To our delightful elves, who manage to make the whole process go smoothly and efficiently, and who rock their elf costumes like nobody’s business.

To Mrs Claus, who makes sure everyone is accounted for and keeps Santa on track.

And of course to our beloved Santa, who is not just adored when he puts on his red suit. He is the heart and the soul and the everything, and we love him.

Last but not least, to all the babies and families who dressed up and put on their best smiles. Thank you for graciously allowing us to share these photos with others. We know how hard it is to be in the hospital over the holidays, and we appreciate and admire how you find your joy even in the most difficult moments.

Happy holidays to all of you, and best wishes for 2015.

The post Turning the NICU into Santa’s Village appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Born months before her due date, mother and daughter now spend their days in Sunnybrook’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Weeks after her birth, Madison weighs only 3 pounds. Laurie speaks for the community of parents of preemies when she describes the whole experience as an “emotional rollercoaster” that you have to live “day by day”. Except for today, which is all about planning for the future.

Down the hall from her room, Laurie slips into a small classroom with several other preemie parents. They are all here to learn CPR, a series of potentially lifesaving skills that will be critical after leaving the cocoon of health specialists within the hospital. Preemies face specific health risks because of their size and development, including a higher risk of choking, so in a way the two-hour session is equal parts skill and reassurance. It’s good to know that there is a way to manage the worst-case scenario.

Before the session, Laurie and I had a chance to sit down and talk about her thoughts on CPR. While most people would agree it’s an important skill, Laurie has actually seen the lifesaving results firsthand. During a camping trip two years ago, a man in a nearby boat had slumped over following a heart attack. She and another bystander delivered CPR until paramedics arrived on scene. “There is the possibility you have to use it in life,” she told me. “So I’m very, very grateful that this is an opportunity.”

Learn more about Sunnybrook’s NICU

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The post Preemie Power! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

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Unlike many of the parents who unexpectedly find themselves in the NICU, I knew my twin girls would come early. Carrying mono mono twins means delivering by 32 weeks at the latest by C-section, but many, including mine, come earlier.

After discovering that I was having twins and they would be preemie, I thought I could handle it. I figured by 32 weeks, they would be little but pretty healthy; they would spend some time in the NICU growing chubby and then they would be home and the whole ordeal would be behind us. I have never been so wrong before in my life.

At 29 weeks, my two girls in distress, I was wheeled in for an emergency C-section. They were born, but did not cry, and were rushed into the next room, to the waiting staff who got them breathing and brought them to their new home in Sunnybrook’s NICU.

Before I became a preemie mum, I had no idea what being a preemie really meant. I knew there were health complications, but didn’t know that being born premature can affect feeding and even can have an effect when your baby goes to school years down the road.

I didn’t know then, what I do now, what so many preemie parents know; that having a baby in the NICU is one of the hardest things that you will ever go through. When my girls were still safely inside my tummy, we took a tour of Sunnybrook’s NICU. We knew we would spend time here, we just didn’t know how much. We peeked in the pods, met nurses and doctors; saw the tiny isolettes, the medical equipment. It was reassuring and terrifying at the same time. We knew we were lucky to be at Sunnybrook, where our son was also born not even two years before, we knew we were in the best hands, but that did not change the fact that we never wanted to find ourselves there. We didn’t want to walk by the parents sitting outside, waiting for ultrasounds, turning right into the unit, feeling scared of what we might find, but we did, every day for 80 days, I made that journey, and I am the better for it.

I am a better mother because of my preemie babies. Yes, I had, and still have, tremendous guilt about their difficult beginning in life. My heart aches for what they have been through, when they were so small that even preemie diapers were too big. Yet, every day when I held my girls, the greatest sense of peace and stillness would come over me. The sounds of the NICU would drift away, and it would just be the three of us. Now, ten months later, I remember that feeling. The feeling of being a mum to two beautiful fighters and their big brother, who loved to practice saying their names.

It is never easy being a preemie parent, it is a badge that many of us wear with honour for the rest of our lives, but we still confront our own fears, our reminders of the beginning. When it’s the hardest of days, when the doctors give us news that we can’t comprehend right away, when we question our abilities to parent, it is important to remember the calmness, the feeling of your baby, tucked safely on your chest, your hearts beating together as one. It is important to remember that peace can come from chaos.

The post Expecting Preemies appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Alana Romain writes about her own Rockstar Preemies and volunteers her time in the NICU to help other preemie families. She has graciously shared this post with us. Thanks, Alana!

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When a healthy full-term baby is born, there’s no doubt over how to respond.  We congratulate the new parents, coo over the beautiful new life that’s been brought into the world.  It’s joyful, exciting.  But when a baby is born prematurely, it’s hard to know what to say.  Is it happy news, or sad?  Do we celebrate?  Pass around baby photos?

Having a premature baby is heartbreaking.  You feel scared, and helpless, and anxious about the future.  After spending over 100 days in the NICU with my own children, Reid and Madeleine – fraternal twins, born at twenty-five weeks gestation – I can easily say that I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.  So I understand the sad looks and the “hang in there” hugs, the loved ones (and sometimes strangers) sending prayers and well wishes.  It’s hard, and it’s sad, and we really do need the love and kind thoughts and encouragement.  But there’s one thing that nobody tells you.  And that is that having a preemie is still really, really wonderful.

If you have a baby in the NICU right now, or if you’ve recently brought your baby home, I can imagine that it might be very hard to imagine feeling like there is an upside to what you are going through.  And, really, that’s because right now there isn’t an upside.  Life as a NICU parent is not easy, and it’s impossible to relax until your child has finally been discharged home.  The transition of taking your preemie home is still difficult though, a huge, scary time full of medical worries and second-guessing your own judgement and maybe adjusting to life at home with oxygen tanks and g-tubes and lots of medication and doctor’s appointments.  Preemie parents know better than anyone else that the complexities of prematurity do not even sort of end at discharge, and that can be a difficult reality to live with.

I often think that, at first, having a preemie is like holding a scale in your hands that is weighted on one side only, with bad experiences and fears and loss.  Eventually, and very, very slowly, happier moments begin to creep in, weighing down the other side of the scale, and that keeps happening, more and more, the further out you get from the day your baby was born.  Madeleine and Reid are nineteen months corrected now, and thankfully, the happy side of the scale has become very heavy, allowing me the chance to heal, just a little, and look forward to the future with a bit less worry that more bad news is just around the corner.  But because of that scale, the balancing out of good and bad, of pain and joy, I’ve also been able to realize that, as parents of premature babies, we may have just been given a gift that full-term parents haven’t.

Preemie parents know loss.  The loss of the dream of a healthy pregnancy, of a big, pregnant belly and a fat, crying baby, and the experience that we thought we were going to have that was going to look like everyone else’s.  We know fear and helplessness, wanting so desperately to help our children and take away their pain, wishing we could do anything to make sure they’d come home with us when this was all over.  We know what it’s like to not know what our future will look like, what our children’s futures will look like, knowing that maybe it will be much harder than we ever imagined.

But we also know what it’s like to look at an impossibly tiny baby with paper-thin skin and eyes that can’t yet open, attached to machines and IV lines, and still honestly feel overwhelming love, still honestly believing they are the most beautiful being that ever existed.  We also know what it’s like to find joy in the tiniest milestones, such as gaining enough weight to join the ‘kilo club’, of moving onto CPAP, or wearing clothes (finally!) for the first time.  We know what it’s like to sit and cuddle our babies skin-to-skin for hours on end, of hooking ourselves up to hospital breast pumps no matter how much we hate it because it’s one of the most important things we can do to help our children grow.  We know what it’s like to love someone so much that we would give anything to see them healthy and happy.  We know what it’s like to realize, finally, that it doesn’t really matter if your child has learning disabilities or motor issues or vision problems, or if they take forever to learn to walk – or even if they never learn – because we know that, as long as they live, we’ll figure the rest out.  We know that no matter how frustrated we may get when they cry or yell or throw things or climb on something they aren’t supposed to climb on, there’s still always a part of us remembering the time when their lungs weren’t strong enough to cry, and we didn’t know if they’d ever yell or throw things or climb.  We know that every milestone, whatever it looks like and whenever it’s reached, is a celebration.  We know that, however overwhelming this parenting thing can feel sometimes, our child is one more child that could have died but didn’t, and that the rest – any little tiny thing we get on top of that – is just icing on the cake.

There is a lot of variation in preemie outcomes, and some parents have it easier or harder than others.  Some of us struggle more, some of us have a harder road to travel, and maybe the blessings aren’t always easily apparent.  But the one thing I know for sure that we all share – the one thing that the doctors and nurses, our families and friends, and all the other moms and dads of the world can’t truly ever understand – is that when we look at our children (our perfect, gorgeous, amazing children) we see warriors, babies who have fought harder and overcome more than we could possibly have imagined, and that getting to be their parents is the best, most incredible thing that could have ever happened to us.

Being a preemie mom has made me a better parent and a better human being.  And I have a feeling it’s made you one too.

Rockstar preemies indeed!

The post The Unexpected Blessing of a Premature Birth appeared first on Your Health Matters.

From Josefa (Mom):

 As a mother of two preemies, I want to share my experiences with parents who are facing what I went through almost 21 years ago. My hope is that the story of my children may encourage other parents while they are facing difficult situations.

Flashback to 1993:  due to my severe pre-eclampsia and critical condition, I was rushed to the hospital. There, I delivered my eldest daughter Joyce by an emergency caesarean section. Before the delivery, the pediatrician had told me what to expect with a baby born that early; if my baby survived, she would definitely have a very rocky start, and there were the possibilities of brain damage, respiratory problems, and blindness.

Joyce was born three months premature at two pounds and seven ounces. Since her lungs were not well developed, I had delivered a silent baby. She was then quickly taken care of by the medical team and placed inside an incubator. It was heart breaking and scary seeing my miniature Joyce covered with different tubes, wires and monitor pads.

Joyce survived from bleeding lungs after surgery on her second day of birth. Against all odds, she gradually gained weight by grams, and took more milk by milliliters. She no longer forgot to breathe, and had fewer tubes and wires covering her body. And finally, I could bathe her in the famous salad bowl just outside the incubator. After two months, she graduated from the NICU, weighing four pounds. I am very grateful to have had one of the world’s best medical teams looking after Joyce, and from whom I had learnt how to take care of her at home.

The early years for Joyce were absolutely challenging, especially when she was hospitalized for very bad pneumonia. I was trained by taking care of a little girl who got sick so often, to the point where Joyce called me “Doctor Mom”! Despite the difficult times, Joyce was a happy and intelligent baby.  Now, she has grown up into a healthy and smart young lady with a big heart.

As a mom of a preemie, there were moments of anxiety and emotion. Will my baby girl be alright? Will she forget to breathe again? How will I produce enough milk for her? When people stared at me and my small baby, I wondered why they did not ask me for the real story, instead of forming judgments. Even when she was brought home, the questions continued. Will Joyce get pneumonia for the fourth time if I let her play in the snow? Will she stand up for herself if she is bullied at school? I do not know how many nights my pillow was wet with my tears.

Of course, there were also countless joyful moments. When Joyce cried for the first time; when she always giggled whenever I said peek-a-boo; when she finished the whole bottle without spilling any; when I witnessed her achieve every small step. Then, when she drew me beautiful pictures, made me pretty cards and crafts, and when she entered university with a top scholarship.

All in all, I cannot ask for a better daughter; I am so proud of her, and thank you Joyce for making a better me and a proud mom!

From Joyce (Daughter):

A newborn baby pierces the room with a cry for air, and with her eyes open and fingers outstretched, she is ready to explore the world. That was the delivery my mother should have had, but when I arrived three months early, the surgical room was silent. Before my mom even got to see her baby, the doctors whisked me away. They later revealed that inside a body that was smaller than a tissue box and weighed about the same as two oranges, my lungs, eyes, and immune system were very underdeveloped.

Improvements in my health over the next weeks at the NICU can in part be attributed to the fantastic health care team who had so much knowledge and dedication. Their ability to console worried parents, and to communicate openly about their child’s health, made them a source of stability and honesty during unpredictable times. However, despite the excellence of the health care team, I would not be leading a healthy life today were it not for my parents.

My birth was risky, but my parents were the true risk takers.

Often the odds seemed stacked against my survival, but my parents still committed all of their love. Questions of whether they would be able to see me grow stronger, reach my first birthday, or my high school graduation crossed their minds every day. What kind of music, sports, and ice cream would our daughter like? Typical questions that other parents would certainly find answers to in time. Yet, for parents of premature babies, there is a fear of not having enough time with the child.

I admire that when facing this uncertainty, my parents acted with courage and hope, holding on to that silver lining. And even though they initially did not know how to care for a baby so small and with specific health needs, they took every opportunity to be involved and to learn.

After the stressful months at the NICU, I was finally permitted to go home – but it was not smooth sailing yet! Every night my parents’ sleeping was interrupted with the crying of a baby who did not want to rest (or cooperate during meal times, baths, or trips in the stroller for that matter). During elementary school, guess who had to help out on projects about pioneers, prairie dogs, model cars, and Costa Rica? Dad and Mom.

Fast forward to this September, and I will be entering my fourth year of undergraduate study in the Arts and Science Program at McMaster University. Now it seems that I am the one asking a lot of questions. In which direction is my career, and how am I to tackle this thesis? Despite living more than an hour’s drive away from home, they visit me on weekends, bring me delicious food, and are quick to offer sage advice.

This story began on a slippery slope, but I am grateful for where we are today. The small scars on my arms and heels from the needles I had relied on almost 21 years ago in the NICU still remind me that life is a gift. Above all, the scars remind me of the support, strength and unconditional love of my parents since day one.

The post Life Inside (and Outside) the Incubator: A Mother and Daughter Collaboration appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Celebrating my first father’s day is a source of great happiness and reflection as well.  I lost my son after only a few precious days, and saw my daughter Meera battle for 16 weeks in the NICU.  Now I draw strength every day from Khalil’s spirit and Meera’s drive.  In their own way, they have taught me about the gift of life, faith and the boundless capacity of the human spirit.  They say Dads are heroes to their children but in my heart, Khalil and Meera are truly my heroes.  Happy Father’s Day!

The post My children, my heroes: reflections from an NICU dad appeared first on Your Health Matters.