Do nurses in NICU hold infants? - Page 3

[Z1Z2]

In DD's NICU, I saw nurses, doctors and volunteer "cuddlers" holding babies. I think which babies were held depended much on how fussy the individual babies were, and which ones did not have lots of visitors. The nurses did not hold DD much, but that was because either I or DH was there for about 15 hours a day.

Paula

[jaye88]

My dd was in the NICU for 7 weeks, and I was there all day almost every day (I think I went home twice), but she also got cuddled lots by the night nurses when I wasn't there. To this day she goes really easily to women she barely knows, and I think it's because she got loved on by so many nurses (most of them women) in the NICU. She can also sleep through anything. She was mostly tube fed, and so didn't necessarily get held while feeding if I wasn't there, but she got held at other times. There was lots of baby cuddling in our NICU! I was sooooo glad that we were there, if we HAD to be in the hospital. They were fantastic.

[DocsNemesis]

Yeah, at the hospital my son was at, they actually had all the babies on seperate schedules for feeding, just so they could be held. Obviously very early or unstable babies werent, but within a few days they were holding my son for every feeding-even though it was by tube. They also had a 1:1 or 1:2 nurse/baby ratio, depending on the day.

As I said, my son was very quiet and didnt cry much, but the baby on the other side of the hallway was quite the opposite. She was always crying and getting worked up. If her parents were gone, I'd see the nurse try a binky and if that didnt work, they'd end up taking her out of the isolette and carrying her around to calm her. I also dont think I EVER saw nurses sitting around talking or playing on the computer. If they had a chance to sit down, it was generally only one, and not for very long.

Any nicu that was just letting the baby's cry should be reported. As someone else said-crying takes a lot of calories and energy. These baby's need to be as calm as possible so they can reserve as much of their calories as possible.

[Chloebeansmom]

My DD stayed in two NICU's.

The first was at a large hospital where they had close to 90 babies inthe NICU. The nurses held the babies when they could but there just wasn't enough time, other than feeds. There were a couple of older babies who's parents couldn't be there much, those babies got a lot more attention and spent time in the swing, etc because they were bigger. Overall though the nurses were great, but insanely busy. If they had time to sit and relax at all, though, they would be holding a baby.

She transferred to a smaller hospital at 2weeks 2 days old. The NICU there only had 4 babies in it, it was so quiet. I loved it there. We were there for just over a month. If I wasn't there to hold Chloe( I was there from about 9am-9pm everyday), someone was always holding her. It was an amazing atmosphere. But they just weren't as busy, so they had time.

[MommyKelly]

Our NICU, the nurses held the babies a lot. It was nice to see. There was also a man that would come and play his guitar and sing softly to the babies, and the nurses would hold a baby or 2, and rock them as he sang.