Tour of the NICU & CVCC

Adam and I met with Dr. Payne for a consult today. He was a very kind man who answered all of our questions and explained to us what would be happening the day that baby is born. When I asked him about a natural birth versus a c-section, he said that they encourage natrual births, because the squeezing of their lungs helps them to have fewer breathing problems. But, he explained what the process would be for both situations.

Once we were done asking questions, we met Melissa who took us on a tour of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Granted, I've never seen a NICU before really, but I was impressed. Most of their rooms are individual rooms, and have a "family area" (a fold-out couch and a small closet) with a curtain to pull back. They have different sized "cribs" to fit the needs of different sized babies, and the nurses are usually assigned one or two patients each. I found a video on their website for the NICU. While we were looking at the room, Nurse Megan, a childhood friend of mine, found us. She works in the NICU and might be taking care of baby while she is there. We are going to meet with her sometime soon, and she is going to help us get ready for baby entering the NICU.

Then we asked to see the Cardiovascular Care Center (CVCC), since that is where she will go after her heart surgery. They, again, have individual rooms for each child, but they are much bigger, and so are the "family areas" in each room. Adam was happy to see that there was an X-Box hooked up in the room we looked at (that ment that he could bring his PS3 in if he buys an HDMI cable ~ and he did buy one online as soon as we got home!). She will probably be here a little bit longer than she will be in the NICU, so it's nice to see that they have a little bit bigger rooms. You can take a virtual tour of their rooms.

While we were walking through the NICU and the CVCC, we saw lots of babies (and children in the CVCC) that were hooked up to different tubes and monitors. Dr. Payne described what she would be hooked up to in about the first 5 minutes of her life. This reality of everything that she is going have to go through is starting to hit me hard.