NAS

Specialties NICU

Published

Hi all,

I had an interview in the CCN last week and it went well! I'm hoping to ask you guys a few questions....

1. What are your favorite techniques for calming a baby with NAS? I've worked with kiddos with NAS before but it's been a whole and it's a big population where I live

2. I've seen a bunch of people refer to an app. Called neofax. I looked in the android store and couldn't find it

thanks all!

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Neofax is iphone only iirc. NeoFax - Truven Health Analytics

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Tight swaddles, pacifiers and snuggles are what work best for me. My favorite thing when I have the time to do it is laying the baby on my chest (baby in a sleep sack and me with a blanket over my scrubs) with a blanket draped over him/her to block the light while we walk around the unit. Puts baby in the perfect place to be able to talk softly or sing, and he/she can hear my heartbeat when we're quiet

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Not sure if they are "kosher", but baby swings (wind up types, no batteries) can help. I had a lullaby playlist on my iPhone, play it in their cribs softly. You can put in a ziplock if you're worried about germs and/or wipe it down. "Baby Go to Sleep" CD has a heart beat rhythm, kids seemed to dig it.

Same techniques work for gut babies, too.

The more you can hold them, the better. Some units have volunteer "cuddlers" who are worth their weight in gold.

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Specializes in NICU.

Swaddling or sleep sacks, the 3 S-es (swaddle, sway, shh (white noise)), sometimes a swing if there is one available. As they get older, we may get an order to increase the time between feeds to no longer than 5 hours, so that if they actually are sleeping, you don't have to wake them up as soon.

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

we took out the baby swings. Babies tend not to have good head support and we noticed their sats dropped while in the swing.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
As they get older, we may get an order to increase the time between feeds to no longer than 5 hours, so that if they actually are sleeping, you don't have to wake them up as soon.

At my place we stop waking them for feeds once they've gained back to above their birth weight. Good results x 10 years with that.

In theory, I suppose there would be a limit on how long we'd actually let them sleep even then, but in practice they always wake up in about 6ish hours. If they were at home their parents wouldn't be waking them for feeds at that point.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
we took out the baby swings. Babies tend not to have good head support and we noticed their sats dropped while in the swing.

For a while we had (on loan from the peds ED, of course, not one of our own) a reclining swing, an uber-fancy-schmancy thing they could lie in as if they were in a bassinet with the head tilted up. Thing would do regular back and forth, side to side, figure-8s, it was awesome. And with the way the kiddos were lying, neck support was not an issue. (Of course, this was regular newborn so not on continuous pulse-ox and can't know that bit for sure.)

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