Heartbeat: Kangaroo care – new-borns move in to brand new neonatal unit

March 3, 2020

After many months of hard work by the estates team, the neonatal unit at City Hospital sprung into life over Christmas as it welcomed its first newborns into the brand new refurbished unit.

After spending months in its temporary home in D16, the neonatal team were beaming with pride as they opened the doors to their unit and got to grips with their brand new facilities, all-purpose built and designed to care for some of the most poorly and vulnerable babies under our care.

To find out more about the new unit, Heartbeat caught up with Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, Jenny Cadwallader-Hunt. She said: “The new unit is amazing, it has been a long time coming but the new facility is a welcome sight. Everything has been revamped from the floor to the ceiling.

“The best thing now is that we have a purpose-built high dependency unit for our most poorly babies. There is plenty of room between the six cots to care for the babies, as well for their parents to spend time with them without feeling cramped and claustrophobic. Importantly, the extra space between the cots now means that there is much less risk of transferring infections between the babies.”

Seven-week old twins, Harleen and Jasleen Kaur Sandhu along with their mom (Daljit Kaur) and dad (Gurpreet Sandhu) were the first patients to move to the unit.

Welcoming the new patients into the unit, Jenny explained the gargantuan task of transferring newborns and the innovative use of kangaroo care.

“Whilst you would think moving a tiny baby from one ward to another in a nice warm cot would be easy, you would be wrong. Moving a baby under the care of the neonatal team takes military precision, care and a keen eye for detail. We have to ensure that the baby stays warm and comfortable and this isn’t easy in the wind and rain in December.

“We can’t transfer them in the cots as we risk introducing infections into our new unit, instead, we use kangaroo care. Babies are carried by their parents, skin to skin as though they are in a kangaroo pouch. This keeps the temperature stable as well as building the bond between baby and parent.”