Anxiety in Neonates

Specialties NICU

Published

Specializes in Neonatal ICU.

Hi. Im doing a post grad course on fundamentals of Neonatal Nursing and I am trying to find out how to identify if your baby is anxious?! Its probably a silly question but I just cannot think. Please help!

Thanks!!

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

I think it would look like a hyperalert baby. I used to call it the Pop-eyed premie look. If the baby is overstimulated a lot over a period of time, they get this wide-eyed OMG look. Might happen if parents (and others) ignore avoidance cues (finger splays, salutes, gaze avoidance, etc.) when interacting w/baby. Sometimes when parents come in, they want to "play" whether the baby does or not, and insisting on direct eye contact.

Look @ info on developmental nursing care. This site has a good summary: http://www.rwh.org.au/nets/handbook/index.cfm?doc_id=719

Here is a quote: "...protect from over-stimulation

handling can effect physiological stability and cause hypoxaemia, especially in the extremely premature, unstable or ill neonate

provide 'time out'/ recovery time when the infant demonstrates avoidance or 'stress' behaviour. Signs of stress behaviour include

colour changes: mottled, dusky, cyanosed

apnoea, bradycardia, desaturation

hiccoughing, sneezing, yawning, gagging, regurgitating feeds

tremors, twitches, frantic activity, arching, frowning, gaze averting

completely flaccid trunk, extremities & face

easy fatiguability..."

Do you mean preemie stress signals?

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

Here is a quote: "...protect from over-stimulation

handling can effect physiological stability and cause hypoxaemia, especially in the extremely premature, unstable or ill neonate

provide 'time out'/ recovery time when the infant demonstrates avoidance or 'stress' behaviour. Signs of stress behaviour include

colour changes: mottled, dusky, cyanosed

apnoea, bradycardia, desaturation

hiccoughing, sneezing, yawning, gagging, regurgitating feeds

tremors, twitches, frantic activity, arching, frowning, gaze averting

completely flaccid trunk, extremities & face

easy fatiguability..."

This sounds exactly like the methadone baby we have in our NBN right now. Parents sometimes don't understand that if she's acting like what prmenrs mentioned above, then passing her around, trying to play with her, & generally making a lot of noise is NOT going to help matters. It bothers me a great deal to see what these babies have to go through....and being in the loud bright nursery doesn't help. (Can you believe there are people at our hosp that have a problem c lowering the lights at night??)

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