Jake enjoys some skin -to-skin contact time with baby Grayson as mom, Ashley, looks on.
Care that only a parent can provide It’s a curious landscape — one that parents describe as bewildering, terrifying and other-worldly. Banks of equipment and pulsating monitors, IVs and electrodes, a commotion of beeps, alarms and whirring machinery all vie for attention; an eerie sense of calm descends as a team of doctors and nurses act with speed and purpose; and at the centre of this swirling medical universe is your own tiny, fragile infant. W R I T T E N B Y: J A N E S S A B I S H O P P H O T O S B Y: G A L E N B R O W N
32
On the heels of one of the most emotionally-charged moments imaginable — the birth of a child, a new parent’s first encounter with the Newton Glassman Charitable Foundation Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Glassman NICU) at Mount Sinai Hospital can be overwhelming. “Many parents describe the NICU like entering a spaceship,” says Dr. Karel O’Brien, staff neonatologist. “This sort of environment is so out of their normal context and they feel completely disorientated and scared when they first arrive. In addition, they’re worried about their sick baby and have huge anxieties about their baby in this unfamiliar environment.” Grayson Pope weighed a mere one pound, 14 ounces when he was born at 26 weeks and three days. When first transferred to the Glassman NICU, he was in an isolette surrounded by tubes and machinery. “All I wanted was to hold my baby — it was heartbreaking,” says Grayson’s mom, Ashley Haynes. Every year, more than 1,000 of the most vulnerable babies are cared for in the Glassman NICU. They may be full-term infants who became unwell after delivery, newborns with congenital abnormalities that were diagnosed prior to delivery, or fragile preemies who need developmental support until their due date. At the Glassman NICU, up to 57 babies can be cared for at any one time by a professional team that includes doctors, nurses, social workers, respiratory therapists, dietitians and pharmacists, along with parents themselves.
