Tuesday Slice: Scrubs and smiles

Twenty years have passed since I wandered through a neonatal intensive care unit.  And now I get to visit again, every Saturday morning.

Yesterday I switched volunteering roles, trading in my newborn nursery blue scrub top for a lavender one worn by NICU rockers.  Then I was escorted upstairs to a place familiar, yet not, passing my daughter's picture in the hallway along the way.

The old unit was smaller, located right next to the old newborn nursery.  I was a parent there for sixty-five days, and an employee for three years.  It was overcrowded if they had more than thirty or so babies.  The new unit was built after both of my NICU rounds, and has sixty-four beds.  The night before my daughter came home, I roomed in with her next door to other newborn moms; the new unit has three built-in overnight rooms.  Everything is self-contained now; there's even a tiny pharmacy in the middle, catering to the specialized pharmaceutical doses for babies who often barely tip a pound on the scales. 

The layout is new, but the ambiance is the same.  It still feels like a world apart, this place with dimmed lights, machines helping babies breathe and eat, every baby attached to at least one or two monitoring leads.  But there are colorful blankets at each bed; some even have cameras for long-distance parents to have visual access to their child. The doctors and nurses are focused on their tiny patients, yet cheerful.  For a unit dealing with serious medical care, the mood is nurturing and positive.

And the smiles are the same.  One of my daughter's doctors was there yesterday, and several of the nurses who either took care of her or worked with me--or both.  This is amazing when you consider the time that has passed.  My daughter will turn twenty-six this year; there are staff members who are at the thirty-year mark and beyond. 

I got some hugs yesterday, too.  I found out that my charge nurse on Saturdays is one of my former coworkers, so there will be a lot of catching up to do.  And then I get to walk the NICU bays again, this time as a volunteer rocker, to help care for these babies with the same love and attention that my own daughter received so many years ago.