NAS babies

[tinypepsnrs2018]

I am currently precepting at the end of nursing school in a NICU. I have been taking care of a NAS baby for the last couple days and I am looking for ideas on how to help improve the comfort of NAS babies. The best thing we have found was having someone hold the baby, but we don't always have volunteers on the night shift to hold the baby and with other babies to care for we can't always hold the baby ourselves. Any ideas would be most appreciated.

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

We use stretchy blankets (waffle pattern) to keep them tightly swaddled and Momaroo swings.

[Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP]

Cluster your cares. Swaddle, white noise, dim the lights/cover isolette/crib with a blanket if you can do so safely. Pacifiers are your best friend. Anything you can do to decrease your baby's exposure to stimuli will help. Do you have something that smells like mom (an old tshirt, a nursing pad, anything at all, if it doesn't smell like cigarettes use it) that can be put close to baby so s/he can smell mom? Sometimes those kids are hard to console and you have to do whatever works.

What scheduled/PRNs do you have at your disposal? USE THEM. If they don't have any, advocate for some. At my old job we used methadone, phenobarb, and clonidine and that worked for most of the kids.