Information sought on bears with hearts

Specialties NICU

Published

We have been toying with obtaining those bears that have the sound of the beating heart as a way to calm the infant and possible offset the other noises in the unit. Has anyone used these bears in their units?

Thanks in advance.

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I had one of those bears for my children here at home (not on a hospital unit). It did seem to calm them, especially that first month. After that, they didn't seem to need it as much.

Since my kids' bear was fuzzy (and only surface washable), my only concern is that you may have an infection hazard if they can't be washed. Of course this was YEARS ago (my youngest is 15) so they may be washable now.

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I used it with my daughter. Put me to sleep more often than her!

Have you considered tape recorders with tapes of heartbeats?. I don't recall the bear being machine washable.

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

We used to have a cassette tape titled, "Baby Go To Sleep", which consisted of lullaby music set to a heartbeat. It did seem to have a nice effect on some of the really agitated kids. I have no idea if it is still available, or if it comes in a CD.

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The bear itself isn't washable, but when my DD was in NICU we bought her one, and it turns out that the "noisemaker" part of it can be removed from the stuffed animal part (which is huge, anyway.) So we'd wrap it in a blanket and put it on the other side of her beanbag when we positioned her. Make sure you get ones with adjustable volume controls - some of the darned things are LOUD!

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Specializes in NICU.

We used to have one, kept it wrapped in a clean blanket as it travelled between babies. Later, we took the player out of the bear, and just used that. It can work really well with term babies, premies didn't seem to need it. It eventually died, and hasn't been on the list of things to buy.

Since then, we have a little player that has rain, the ocean, a heartbeat, and a nursery song (we never use that). Again, it works really well with some babies. That can be wiped down with disinfectant, and wasn't very expensive.

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Specializes in NICU/Neonatal transport.

I had a crazy thought one night, to basically have a softly contoured bed that would be warm, have a heartbeat and rise and fall gently like adult respirations - kangaroo care essentially for babies who aren't stable enough to actually be out and doing it.

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Lil Peanut, that's not crazy at all, it's GREAT! When Katie was on the jet ventilator all I could think about was how uncomfortable she must be, ripped out of her warm womb and left to dry out on a big open table with too many lights and lots of noise. Not to mention the tubes and tape and lines. I would have LOVED it if she'd had such a comfort device available to her - as it is, we started kangaroo care as soon as we possibly could.

Go forth, invent...

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