When a Newborn is in the NICU

It's daunting for anyone who is not part of a hospital staff to walk into a NICU -- the intensive care unit of the hospital for newborn babies. First there is the protocol of having your identity checked and then the ritual of hand washing (usually 1-2 minutes with warm water and antibacterial soap).

Then there's the place itself: little tiny preemies and other sick babies in incubators attached to machines that fire off statistics about their vital signs. Bells are always chiming and these horrible alarms start ringing when a baby stops breathing or shows other signs of distress. The exhausted doctors and nurses rush around looking stressed out trying to keep every little charge in their care alive.

If it's bad for friends and relatives, it's that much worse for parents. The NICU is not a place anyone wants to go.Several new studies show that for parents with premature babies the stress and trauma of having a baby whisked off to the NICU can last for years afterwards, according to an article published in the New York Times. The article cites several scientific studies indicating that a NICU experience can create lasting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Though many children who come early have few if any problems, being born premature (which is defined as pre 37-weeks gestation) can lead to a host of lifelong health problems and retardation.

In America these days we seem to do everything to keep premature babies, even micropreemies who may not have a chance at a normal life, alive. We use aggressive intervention and the latest "advances" in medical technology.

Sometimes this absolute determination to keep a baby that did not get a chance to gestate fully alive seems misguided. If a child is going to grow up to have terrible health and other problems and a poor quality of life, is it fair of us to try to defy nature in every way we can to keep that baby alive?

To read a detailed article on premature birth first published in Pregnancy Magazine, click here.

To read a first-person account of visiting a friend's baby in the NICU, click here.

Learn As Much As You Can Before You Vaccinate Your Baby

It's overwhelming to have a new baby -- in a wonderful, fearful, giddy sort of way -- and there's a lot that you'll wish you did differently after the fact.

But here's one mistake not to make: Find out about vaccines before you start shooting up your child.

The Hep B vaccine is administered a few hours after birth. But Hep B is a sexually transmitted disease. If you and your partner are monogamous and do not use drugs or share needles and do not have Hep B, you should not give this vaccine to your newborn or your child at any age. (Hep B tends to be a mild illness in adults but a dangerous one in very small children.)

Vaccinating a newborn against Hep B is not only not necessary but it is also dangerous to your baby. The vaccine is known to cause adverse reactions. The link there is to the government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

Here's another link to a less mainstream source that discusses the dangers of the Hep B vaccine. The small chance that you child could have an adverse reaction, including anaphylactic shock, is more of a risk than the disease, Hep B, itself. The long term immune consequences and potential harmful effects of megadosing children on vaccines have yet to be studied.

There is nothing wrong with vaccines. Though some skeptics argue that diseases like Polio were already on the decline because of improved sanitation, chlorine added to swimming pools, and natural immunity--as well as the normal epidemiological trends--most people agree that the Polio vaccine helped save many children from being crippled or worse.

But Polio has been eradicated in the United States and most countries in the world, which is a good reason to think and consider before giving your baby that vaccine.

All of this was the subject of a lot of debate during a CDC vaccine community meeting in Ashland, Oregon. You can read more about that meeting here.

I am writing a feature for a national magazine about whether unvaccinated children put others at risk. If you want to weigh in on the debate, please contact me.