Well Baby Nursery

I had a great time last week in the well baby nursery. Our main goal is to learn the newborn exam. To be honest, prior to this rotation, I never really had much contact with newborns or infants, so this was a perfect time for me to get comfortable with babies, swaddling, crying, etc. The exam is fun. You can pick babies up, play with them, and do the same thing over and over. They're generally pretty cooperative (since they don't know what's coming). I got to hear a few good heart exams, a ventral septal defect and a persistent patent ductus arteriosus. Reflexes like the suck, grasp, and Moro (startle) are also fun. Learning about newborn rashes, parental teaching, and anticipatory guidance was pretty useful.

One week is the perfect amount of time. It's fun to play with the babies, the hours are light, and they're cute (the fingers! the toes!). I also liked interacting with new parents with their apprehensions and aspirations. But the week was not too intellectually challenging. There are only a few well-baby nursery problems: weight and breastfeeding, jaundice, and, well, I can't think of much more (circumcision?).

We did have one particularly impressive patient. This was an eight hour old boy born at 41+ gestational weeks (induced because of post-dates). We put him on his tummy to look for any spinal cord defects (sacral dimples, tufts of hair) and he did the most amazing thing. He got onto his forearms, lifted his head to about 45 degrees and started looking around. That's at least a one month milestone! What a precocious kid.

Image is in the public domain, from Wikipedia.