When Your New Baby Has Health Problems: The NICU Experience

By Corrie Pelc

It’s what all expectant parents fear the most – a baby born either too early or with complications and rushed off to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where their newborns are placed in strange-looking bassinets and attached to tubes and wires instead of being able to nestle in their parents’ arms.

While this is a frightening and stressful time for new parents, understanding what a NICU is and what you should ask if you find yourself there with your new baby can help make it a bit less scary.

“A neonatal intensive care unit provides specialized health care to newborn infants and their families,” explains Charles F. Simmons Jr., M.D., director of the Division of Neonatology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Selected infants may require intensive care due to prematurity, congenital anomalies or other acquired conditions that threaten the health of newborns.”

And how serious the situation is will also determine what type of NICU a baby will be admitted to; there are three different levels of NICUs.