Silence, I am small

• 2 of December of 2018
• Lorraine Fernandez
• 1 comment

With this week's entry in, we want to introduce you to the new ally who has come to our Neonatal Unit in order for silence to reign, and has settled in a preferred place, and I would say she's come to stay.

Its technical name is acoustic controller, but as it is too formal, from now on we will call it "The Ear".

The ear, as its sole mission, is to warn in the form of a traffic light, when the acoustic limit is exceeded. If it is Verde, is that the noise is acceptable, when it passes to orange is that we are exceeding the recommended level and if it passes to Red, warns us that we have gone through noise, with a message on bright LEDs that puts "Silence".

And all this, why?

Many will think that a little noise is not detrimental to a newborn, and in part you are right. But our newborns are extraordinarily fragile and with features so peculiar that simply exposing them to excessive noise and excessive light harms them in a way that slows their development and growth. And this is not what we say, this is what the Scientific Evidence says, and she is another ally, who endorses us to make changes in the way we work, which are sufficiently proven in many studies.

How did we get to this point?

Dra. Mónica Domingo, coordinator of the neonatal unit, convinced that we could do things better, proposed to the whole team to organize in working groups, to identify what we could improve, what we needed to change and how we could adapt it to our Neonatal unit.

So we set to work and spent months organized, working on the basis of Developmental and Family-Centered Care, focusing on our little fighters and adapting their entire physical and human environment to clear their way and make things easier. so that they develop and grow as they would in their natural environment which is the mother's womb.

In the coming months you will know the changes that we are making.

And as today's protagonist is La Oreja we will talk about how it affects, what they hear and what they see, our babies.

Light and Noise

The mother's womb is a liquid place, warm, dark, with rhythmic movements, with monotonous and muffled sounds, in contrast to neonatal units, which are cold, full of shrill noises and excessive light that makes sleep interrupted. and they are not prepared to take on all this stress, we must help them.

Unfortunately there are noises that we cannot eliminate, for example those that produce the machines we use, but there are others that do. We can avoid knocking on the doors of the incubator, we can reduce the alarms of the monitors and the pumps and we can avoid talking loud.

If we reduce the noise and dim the light, the baby will sleep better, his need for oxygen will decrease, his heart will beat slower, his breathing will calm down, his blood pressure will improve and he will gain more weight, so you can go home sooner. . But not only that, avoiding exposure of your developing immature brain to an aggressive environment will reduce your chances of developing sequelae of learning, relationships with other children, and behavior. Don't you think there's enough reason to try?

So if you are going to visit our unit soon, remember:

 The silence and speaking quietly helps me grow