SON Alumni Offers Comfort To Preemies And Moms

'Joey Jersey' offers comfort to preemies and moms

by CHRIS HAWES
WFAA
Posted on July 21, 2010 at 9:49 PM
Updated Thursday, Jul 22 at 9:05 PM 

FORT WORTH — A nurse's invention is saving the lives of babies by regulating their breathing and heart rates when nothing else works.

Kinley Tiner — who weighs four pounds and eight ounces — is crying, and there's no obvious reason why.

The child was born one month early, and is in Cook Children's Medical Center Neonatal Intenstive Care unit. The unit handles the most serious cases in North Texas, but even with the best of care, as many as 10 percent never go home.

"Every time I see it, it takes my breath away... seeing those little tiny babies and how they're the little fighters that they are," said nurse Amanda Davis.

Davis and her colleagues try to convince parents to take one extra step that can be the boost their infant's need to survive: It's called "Kangaroo Care," and it involves placing a near-naked infant on a parent's bare chest, sometimes for hours.

"Sometimes if the baby is acting disoriented and very stressed out, and its heart rate is up, once we get her settled in on the chest, her heart rate goes down, we're able to wean on the oxygen," Davis explained.

But despite the high stakes, not all moms would agree to take part in the program. Blankets sometimes slipped, and tubes were in the way.

"One of the common complaints ... they felt like they didn't have that privacy," said nursing manager Cathe Wooley.

So earlier this year, nurse Amanda Davis went to her sewing machine and — after several weeks — came up with what she calls a "Joey Jersey."

"These ties can secure breathing tubing and IV tubing and feeding tubing," she explained.

The neonatal unit started using the Joey Jerseys last month, and already, more parents are practicing the Kangaroo Care technique.

It worked for Kinley Tiner and her mom Shayla. Just seconds after settling in on her chest, the one-week-old infant quieted... and was soon sleeping.

E-mail chawes@wfaa.com