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Not-So-Tiny Anxiety
Overcoming the Fear of Caring
for Your Preemie
for Your Preemie
By Katherine Bontrager
And Dr. Burke says one of the best tools for building confidence is to assume the child's care for a day or two in the hospital before the baby is discharged. At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital this approach is called "rooming in."
"After the parents have been taught how to care for their preemie – and this teaching can be quite complex, especially if the child is going home on oxygen therapy or will require tube feedings – the parents and the baby spend the last day or two of their hospitalization in a room near the nursery," Dr. Burke says.
During this trial run, parents assume the responsibility of caring for all their baby's needs from the simplest acts like changing a diaper or giving a bottle to the more complex acts like giving medicines by mouth, changing out oxygen cylinders or performing tube feedings, Dr. Burke says. "If the parents can do everything their baby needs under the hospital's roof, there's no reason to think they can't do the same things under their own," he says.
If the parents aren't able to do everything, then nothing is lost, because they can walk down the hall and ask for assistance, Dr. Burke says. "Once we get that problem taken care of and teach them what to do, we simply have them 'room in' again until they do everything correctly," he says.
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