Newborn Medicine | Clinical Activities

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

The birth of a child is always an amazing and exciting experience. Expectant parents often dream of the day when their beautiful, perfect baby will be born. Sometimes, complications can occur for mother or baby before, during, or after the delivery, and the baby must receive intensive care. Parents may discover during the pregnancy that their baby is at risk for certain complications (for example, a birth defect like spina bifida is found by ultrasound before delivery or a genetic disease is known to run in the family), or complicatoins may arise late in pregnancy (for example, toxemia or preeclampsia) or during delivery.

Whether your child is born prematurely, suffers from a medical condition, or has a birth defect, the experts at St. Louis Children's Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are ready to provide the very best possible care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The 52 bed NICU provides state of the art treatment and monitoring equipment, including ECMO (a heart lung machine that can be used temporarily to permit recovery when acute heart and/or lung failure occurs), surfactant therapy (a medicine that helps prematurely born babies to breath more easily), and high frequency oscillatory ventilation (a type of breathing machine that is necessary for some infants to help their lungs develop and heal). The unit is staffed by specially trained physicians and nurses and also includes pediatric residents and neonatal fellows (physicians who are specializing in treating children and treating sick newborns). In addition, nationally known surgical and medical specialists, including heart specialists, brain specialists, spinal cord specialists, kidney specialists, and many others, are available to consult on any problem that arises for your baby. All of the physicians and nurses take special interest in insuring that each infant is receiving the proper medications, including pain relief medicines and sedation. A pharmacist is available in the NICU to insure proper dosing of medicines and selection of drugs. Portable radiologic and diagnostic equipment is used when clinically feasible to reduce the need to move medically fragile patients for tests.

The NICU nursing staff are registered nurses who have an average of 5 years of nursing experience and have completed a seven week orientation program. Clinical nurse specialsts who have Masters Degrees and extensive neonatal experience and training are also very involved in both the clinical care of infants and in nursing education, research, and administration in the NICU.

Parents are encouraged to visit their baby whenever they can (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Parents may bring siblings to visit new brothers or sisters after your baby's nurse is sure that the sibling does not have a contagious disease. Parents are asked to provide a list of other relatives or friends who have permission to visit their baby. Because of space limitations, we request that each baby have only two visitors in the NICU at any time. Parent waiting rooms are available just outside the NICU for visitors to wait.

In the NICU are two family participation rooms where parents may room in overnight with their child before she or he is discharged to gain confidence in feeding, giving medicines, handling special equipment, and gaining confidence with their baby. A parent lounge is also available which provides parents with beds, lockers, shower, and bathroom facilities.

As your new baby grows stronger and healthier, we want your stay to be as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Parents are encouraged to ask questions, make requests, become involved in discharge planning, and learn all they can about the care and treatment of their baby.

A parent support group of veteran parents is available to provide families with advice and support throughout their baby's stay. Full-time social workers are also available to facilitate parental coping.

Our NICU has recently begun a series of staged renovations which will result in the coming years in many improvements for both babies and families. Lighting that can be individualized for each baby, carpeting to reduce noise, more breast feeding rooms, and private sleeping rooms for mothers are just a few of the planned changes.

We want to provide your baby with whatever she or he needs to have the best possible outcome. We want to help you meet all the needs of your special baby.