Building Brighter Futures
As she enters the hospital lobby, Noelia recalls the day when her newborn Ozzie, just one day old, was rushed to the NICU at Children's Memorial Hospital.
After a normal, full-term pregnancy, the last place she and her husband Hector expected to be was the NICU. But that is where their firstborn spent his first three months, battling life-threatening respiratory and liver complications caused by meconium aspiration, a condition in which a baby inhales a sticky substance produced by his intestines as a byproduct. Ordinarily, babies pass meconium during the first 24 hours of life. Some babies are stressed during pregnancy and delivery and pass this substance, which, if inhaled, can result in potentially dire consequences. Many of those days, Ozzie's parents wondered if he would survive.
Monitoring progress
Today, Noelia is focused on keeping up with her rambunctious toddler as he clomps down the hallway in his kid-sized cowboy boots. They are heading to Ozzie's bi-annual check-up in the NICU follow-up program, staffed by neonatologists with a special interest in development, such as Karen Mestan, MD, who cared for Ozzie as a critically ill newborn.
The NICU follow-up program at Children's Memorial enlists a team of specialists to monitor the progress of NICU “graduates” in areas such as motor skills, speech/language, learning, memory, behavior and emotional development. Most critically ill newborns develop normally after they go home, but the risk of developmental delays is higher than average. Early intervention is critical; a child's capacity for learning is highest during the first three years of brain development.
“Our goal is to help high-risk NICU babies reach their best developmental potential,” says Raye-Ann Odegaard deRegnier, MD, director of the program. “Many of our graduates can catch up to their peers if their developmental delays are detected and addressed early on.”