Omicron Revived a Heartbreaking Pandemic Measure in NICUs
Ryan McAdams, a neonatologist in Madison, Wisconsin, had a complex case to handle: A tiny newborn with a heart defect needed surgery. The baby had been struggling to feed, so doctors planned to insert a gastronomy tube directly into the stomach to assist in supplementary feeding. The baby’s mother was around all the time to care for the infant, until she tested positive for COVID-19 and wasn’t allowed to be in the hospital.
The baby wasn’t feeding as well without the mom there, McAdams says. When the mom’s isolation period officially ended, at midnight before the scheduled procedure, she rushed back to the hospital. She told McAdams the agony she had experienced at home, sobbing as she watched the cribside camera set up to see her baby. “She just kept saying, ‘I wanted to be there,’” he says. “It was heartbreaking.”
As a part of the hospital where babies are sent when they are very sick—perhaps because found openings. As case rates rose, caring for babies in the NICU became more complex, and families struggled to keep up with changing policies.
