Late NICU Night

Baker had an O.k. day today, but had some issues. When Baker's mom was on her day visit the day nurse asked her if she wanted to hold Baker today, that he could tolerate it and probably again this evening. Teresa was very excited about this so she said yes. Now I explained in the earlier post the mountains that have to be moved in order to move Baker from his isolette to Mom or Dad's chest, and that they always have a respiratory therapist on hand to assist with the move. Well the day nurse thought she could handle it all by herself. Before she moved Baker she didn't get any of his tubes or probes straight and tried moving him to Mom's chest. It also seemed that she was nervous moving him. He did not like it at all, his O2 sat level went way down and he wasn't recovering. Teresa asked if she needed an RT – and the nurse said no it's o.k. After a few more minutes of him not recovering the nurse said – I guess he doesn't want to be messed with. Teresa asked again for a respiratory therapist and finally one came. He still wasn't recovering so Teresa asked that they put Baker back in his isolette, and so they did. He finally recovered. This was the first time this happened. The last 3 times we did the Kangaroo care, he seemed to improve – and coincidentally the last 3 times we had a competent nurse and respiratory therapist.

His day was fine after that. We came back for our evening visit and Baker seemed O.k. but then we notice 3 nurses tending to 8 babies in our cluster. We were just told yesterday that they staff the clusters with 1 nurse per 2 babies and usually they have one critical baby (Baker) and one not so critical baby. Tonight it was different our nurse had 2 critical babies including Baker and 1 not so critical. The other critical baby was getting a whole lot more attention then Baker because the parents were upset about their baby's condition. So we are going to help the nurse out and hang out till the next shift at 6 AM. We just came home so Teresa can pump, and then we are heading back to the hospital.

I understand that we can't have tenured 10 year veteran nurses every shift, but it's become a pattern that when he has nurses that are a little green he doesn't do well – and when he gets a veteran nurse he does excellently.

I guess this is all part of the roller coaster that we are on, we just pray daily that these days are far and few between.