The lived experience of infants in neonatal intensive care – part two

Neonatal intensive care units (NICU) provide specialist care to infants born prematurely or infants who are medically unwell.  The skills and knowledge of neonatal staff, combined with medical technologies, provide extraordinary lifesaving measures  for critically unwell infants. But when an infant is admitted to the NICU, there is an inevitable disruption to their early experiences of connection and care. Infants and their parents will have to adapt to the stressors of the hospital environment. They will also need to navigate the uncertainty of  what this experience means for their  future physical,  social, emotional and cognitive development and wellbeing.  

In the second episode of this two-part series, we continue to speak with neonatologist Dr Natalie Duffy about lived experiences of the NICU. The conversation explores the key themes that infants and parents express about their experience of NICU – a place that is both ‘safe and scary’, with  ‘hard things’ but also powerful ‘moments of meeting’. The episode also addresses how health care and community professionals develop responsive care that engages with infants’ earliest communication cues, nurturing their mental health needs as they grow and develop at this critical stage of life.     

Listen to the first episode in this two-part series: 

The lived experience of infants in neonatal intensive care – part one

In this episode, you will learn about: 

• Infants’ experiences of the NICU as being  ‘scary and safe’ and the inherent tension between need for medical interventions that keep them safe and a foreign environment that impacts their growth and development [2:40]. 

• Infants’  emotional experience of   ‘all the hard things’  and the ‘emotional roller coaster’ of procedures and interventions [3:48].   

• The power of ‘moments of meeting’ where infants, caregivers and health professionals  engage and connect [4:34]. 

• How the Newborn Behavioural Observation Tool provides a framework to think about how infants are using behaviours and cues to communicate [4:56].

• How the Newborn Traffic Light Tool provides responsive care for infants during painful procedures and how it might be applied in other care environments or community settings [13:00]. 

Further information and resources:

Online courses 

Practice strategies suite for infants and toddlers 

Keeping the infant and toddler in mind 

Webinar recording 

What are infants telling us: From neonatal nursery care to supporting optimal infant development 

Resources and tools from other organisations 

Applying the Brazelton Approach to supporting babies undergoing painful procedures. – Brazelton Centre UK 

Newborn Traffic Light Tool – The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne 

Newborn Behavioural Observations (NBO) training course information – The Women’s 

Journal articles 

A study of the infant’s lived experience of neonatal intensive care 

The newborn behavioural observations system: A relationship-building intervention to support families in the neonatal intensive care unit 

The lived experiences of critically ill infants hospitalised in neonatal intensive care: A scoping review