Chapters Transcript Video Skin to Skin Video Embed Holding a newborn skin to skin is what every new parent looks forward to. But parents of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit often had to wait weeks or months before they could hold their babies. This was especially true if the infants were on respiratory support with a high frequency ventilator known as a jet. The day that they told us that we could start doing skin to skin. It was a surprise for us and I just started crying immediately because I, I thought we were going to have to wait a long time. It's just nice to have close to me. Um Yeah, I just really feel like I'm, I'm getting to bond with her more. So it really, it really does change my entire day and week and I just feel so much closer to her. It's real nice. Both babies Owen Beckett and Olia fine were born under two pounds. Both were put on the jet ventilator to help their immature lungs. Sometimes it was weeks before they were able to hold their baby skin to skin just because we didn't have the maneuvers in place to move the baby and the equipment safely. So that the family could hold. You can see by looking at all the tubing and wires just how difficult it is to move these tiny infants. But in a statewide project that Williams helped lead California neonatal intensive care units worked together to establish safe procedures for getting the tiny infants on the jet from the incubator to their parents' arms. It's so good for the baby and it's so good for the family that we have to find ways to work with the equipment we have and ensure that we can provide that best care which is skin to skin with their parents. It's a 3 to 4 person job and once the baby is moved, nicu specialists want the baby to stay on the parents' chest for close to two hours. Parents say it's all worth it. Get in to watch her do it for the first time to be on her mom. Her mom gained bond with her like that was like very uh emotionally overwhelming uh and very special to watch. But of course, it sometimes feels like, you know, we're handling something so delicate when they're taking her out of her incubator and she's got all these tubes hooked up to her face and making sure we don't pull on at her, tug it. But once we get her settled, she's super happy. We're happy too. It's huge. There's so much time that we are uh spending away from him unfortunately. So knowing that we're going to get dedicated time with him, get to connect with him this way a couple hours. Um, it makes a huge difference. Created by
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