Re: Developmental Delays, Time Spent in NICU
Steven F. Holle (steve@oz.sunflower.org)
Mon, 04 Mar 1996 21:59:50 -0600
I've read a few posts on the "Our Kid's" (http://wonder.mit.edu/ok/) list
that some children have been taught to sign while trying to express
themselves. I'm not sure what degree of speech delay has been experienced
before this recommendation is made. It was mentioned that signing gives a
child another reference to assign meaning to words or phrases.
Developmental delays are my greatest worry at this point also. For us, so
far, so good. But we're at only 3 months corrected. I've heard a
generalization that preemies can only learn "one thing at a time" where
full-term infants can learn multiple things. Can anyone provide any
additional information?
As far as time spent in the NICU, we didn't observe that many parents present
either, at first. One parent seemed to be there 24 hours/day every day. As
we progressed through the experience we found many parents were there at
different times of the day.
For our own experience, we spent the first few days very close. After a few
days the NICU staff made us feel very comfortable with the care that our
children were recieving was the best. Combined with the medical training
I've had and the quality of answers to our questions, they made us feel
confident that we had nothing to fear. Those first few weeks, we felt like
we had very little to contribute, so we cut back to a couple of hours a day.
By the time they grew enough so that we could hold and feed them, we were
limited by our employment and family obligations. We tried to visit during
feedings a couple times a day.
We felt guilty not spending more time, but the staff made us feel comfortable
with what we felt we could do.
Steve