Leaving the NICU

Most babies go out the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) and grow into normal, salubrious children. Some get out the NICU with temporary or chronic medical conditions. Use the fourth dimension during your baby's NICU stay to learn how to care for your baby when she goes home.

What needs to happen before your babe can be discharged?

The special day you've been waiting for is almost here. Your baby will soon be set up to come up home. Once your baby achieves the following milestones, she's getting closer to going home:

  • Keeps herself warm
  • Sleeps in a crib, not an incubator
  • Weighs most 4 pounds or more
  • Has learned to breast- or canteen-feed
  • Breathes on her own

To help ready you for going home and taking care of your baby full fourth dimension, staff in the NICU volition assist you get comfy feeding, dressing and bathing your baby. They will teach you:

  • How to give her medications
  • Take her temperature
  • Use medical equipment at home

The more you practice caring for your baby while she is in the infirmary, the easier it will be when y'all go home. Before your baby goes home, learn infant cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Your hospital may offer the grade, or you tin detect 1 through the local Scarlet Cross or burn down section. Although yous probably will never demand to utilize CPR, it could assist you relieve your baby's life in a medical emergency.

A team from the hospital, including your baby's master nurse, volition assistance you programme for your baby's discharge. They will refer y'all to any specialists or community services you may need, including equipment-supply companies. The social worker or example manager at the hospital often can help brand arrangements for equipment deliveries, payment and other of import bug.

If your baby is almost ready to go home, just non quite, your infant may move to the "step-downwardly" or intermediate-intendance nursery. Although yous are happy your baby is getting ameliorate, you may exist a fiddling nervous almost leaving the familiar staff and routines of the NICU. A visit to the step-down nursery before your baby is moved may help ease your concerns.

The step-down nursery may be in the same hospital as the NICU, although not every hospital has one. Sometimes, babies are transferred to a community infirmary closer to home. Your baby's doctors will discuss any transfer plans with you lot in advance. If yous and your baby's doctors decide this is right for your infant, the babe probably volition be moved in an ambulance.

The step-down plant nursery is usually quieter than the NICU. There are fewer machines because these babies no longer require the type of intensive care the NICU provides. Your babe needs fewer tests now. But she still needs a lot of care and residual to go along to abound and recover.

You lot may be nervous nearly caring for your baby on your own. Many hospitals give you the gamble to "room in" with your infant for a night or 2 earlier she goes domicile. Parents often find this is a helpful way to fix to go abode with their babies.

One or both parents can stay with the baby and take charge of her care. But the nurse is there to respond any questions, if y'all have any.

Before the big day, your baby may take a few terminal tests, such as blood tests and a hearing examination. Your infant may also be given a "car-seat test." Your baby's heart and breathing are checked as she sits in a car seat to brand sure the positioning is safe for her. When all the examination results are in and the baby is ready to be discharged, you tin finally have your infant home!

Babies who accept been in the NICU should be followed up past a pediatrician who is well informed about the infant's NICU history and who tin monitor the baby's medical and developmental needs. Some babies in NICUs are referred to early intervention programs either by NICU staff, their follow-upwardly providers or parents themselves. These are costless programs that offer a range of services to children under 3 years of age who take or are at gamble for developmental problems. Many hospitals besides provide various follow-up programs to assess how babies who have been in the NICU are doing. Speak to your baby's wellness care squad to learn more almost these resources.

You will always retrieve this difficult and special time in the NICU with your child. Now it's fourth dimension to create new and cute experiences and memories, together, at home, where your babe belongs.


Last reviewed: August, 2014