NICU

Remember on the last post how I was talking about the NICU? Well today I am going to go into more detail with that. 

The NICU, neonatal intensive care unit, is a place where early and sometimes sick babies go to to get all better. Miss Ashlee e planned to me that when Noah was born he looked a little different. He has Trisomy 8, Flat Stanley wrote about that last year. She put it real simple like...we all have chromosomes. Each person is suppose to have 46 but some kids have extras and it makes them special. Like kids like Micah. He has 47 it is called trisomy 21, we know it as Down syndrome. 

Babies who rock that extra chromosome sometimes have to stay in the NICU. Half of the babies born with Down syndrome have to have heart surgery after they are born. When they get their surgery they recover in the NICU. Noah's trisomy is only partial and that means it isn't a full extra copy, but just a part of one. Ok enough about chromosomes. 

Like I said when Noah was a baby he was in the NICU. He had to have surgery on his belly button and then got a really bad infection. That was before Miss Ashlee adopted him. His transitional care mom was there to take care of him. A transitional care mom is just a temporary mom until they get adopted. The infection got really bad and he had to stay in the hospital for a long time, but then he got all better. 

The NICU is designed so that it's very safe and very sterile. People coming into see the babies had to not be sick, wash their hands and put on paper gowns so that they didn't get the baby sick from the outside germs. Any time a mom or dad would leave the room for any reason they would have to wash up before they came back into see the baby. Some of the babies in the NICU  are so little. That's why the doctors and nurses want to be extra careful so that they don't     get them sick. 

When MissAshlee, AJ and Micah  went to see the cardiologist they had a new  model NICU room.   We could go in and look at what it was like to be in a NICU. There was a baby in a plastic bin that is called an incubator. It's not the same as what chickens are hatched in, I ask. The room had a lot of machines and some bags hanging that looked like they had water in them. It was really medicine.  I guess as a kid seeing all that with it being your baby brother or sister can be real scary. Even as a mom and daddy it can be scary. That's why they have that room there. So you can go look and see what it would be like.  

Miss Ashlee said the machines can make beeping sounds and other sounds and flash different color lights and to a new mom that can be hard. Even though she never had to be in the NICU with Noah, because she acted him after that, he still had a lot of stuff done at the hospital and had to spend lots of nights. She said because he wasn't a new baby he went to a floor called the PICU, pediatric intensive care unit. That's for bigger babies and kids.  Many times Miss Ashlee would spend the night on the couch in Noah's room in the PICU. The NICU doesn't have a place for moms and dads to sleep. 

As a photographer Miss Ashlee has gone into the NICUs to take pictures of the new babies for their moms and dads. She said sometimes they are super tiny, sometimes they have tubes on them and some times they are a bit bigger, but they are all beautiful. 

Learning about the NICU made me feel less scared about it. Here are the pictures from the NICU room we got to visit. 

Cardiology

Howdy y'all!

Today I got a chance to go learn about the human heart! AJ, Micah and I headed to a doctor called pediatric cardiologist. That is a mouthful! It means kids heart doctor.

The office was super cool! They had a wall with rain on it. It sounded so peaceful! I could have sat the all day, but.....

Then I saw a cool room that was called a model NICU room. I ask what that meant and Miss Ashlee said NICU stood for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. That basically means sick baby room. Like when babies are born really early and are tiny. I will write about that later.

We went back to a small room where Micah took off his shoes and got on the scale. Then he sat up on a doctors table. After that they put a blood pressure cuff on his arm. A blood pressure cuff gives your arm a big hug! The machine it is attached to beeped and showed some numbers. The nurse said they were good.

While he was sitting on the table the nurse had Micah take off his short and then she put stickers all over him!! 13 stickers to be exact. She reached for a handful of wires and hooked them on to the stickers. After they all got on there Micah had to freeze like a statue. He only had to stay still for a couple seconds maybe a minute at most. All done!

Next it was on to another room. We didn't stay in that room very long before another nurse came in and took us to go get a picture of Micah's heart. The room was a little dark and there was a big machine in it next to a table. There was a tv in there playing Monsters Inc!! How cool. Micah laid on the table and they put blue gel on his chest. Then guess what! A picture of his heart showed up in the screen of the big machine. AJ said that's not really what a heart looks like but Miss Ashlee said yes it was.

That test took a lot longer. Me and AJ got bored. It's hard to stay quiet for so long. After it was over we went back to a room. There, me, AJ and Micah all played on the table until the doctor came in to talk to their mom. They talked forever but in the end they said Micah's heart was healthy.

As we were leaving we played in a funny mirror that made us all different shapes and sizes. It was super cool!

Ripleys Believe it or Not!

Howdy folks!

We are just seeing such cool things here in Texas. Did you know they have a Ripley's Believe it or not Museum here? Have you ever heard of Ripleys Believe it or not? Here is a link to check out the webpage http://www.ripleys.com/ Its a collection of odd, weird and hard to believe things. It is full of fun facts and cool things. They even have a wax museum. That was my favorite part. Check out our visit. After we got to have candy!!! What a great day!