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Food for thought

A blog by Nicholas Embleton in Community

  • Entries

    9

  • Comments

    8

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    1,452

About this blog

In Food for Thought, I write about premature babies, neonatal nutrition, and the small things that can make a big difference in early life, also including butterflys. This is a place and space for science, stories, and reflections from a 30+ year career spent caring for babies and their families. Please feel free to comment on my posts.

Entries in this blog

Neonatal Butterfly Project

It's the little things that count.

Trigger warning - discussions about babies dying. Trust in the medical profession is the foundation of effective healthcare systems, directly influencing adult patients’ willingness to seek care, disclose confidential & highly sensitive information, and comply with treatments. Human connections are what builds that trust. In the NICU it’s a bit different because the first human connections often happen around admission, which is often unexpected, sudden and dramatic. Connections we form in
Neonatal Butterfly Project

I seen two babies on that scan. I wanted two babies.

Most of us are fascinated by how different or similar twins are. I often use ‘twins’ as shorthand for ‘twins, triplets and more’ but fully recognise the unique challenges of a loss in higher order pregnancy. I know several families who had triplets and either one or two babies died; I will ask some parents to share their stories and the unique challenges faced by loss in a higher order pregnancy. To find out why people feel a twin pregnancy is special, we need to speak to them. How did we do the
Neonatal Butterfly Project

Twin loss. At least you've still got one.

Parents' views and experience of baby loss in a multiple pregnancy. Acknowledgement is key. PParents who had a multiple pregnancy where one or more babies died, but where one (or more) babies survive, face unique challenges. Our research identified many themes - mostly centred around acknowledgment. Acknowledgement that this was/is a multiple pregnancy a baby died - and most often had a name (and not “twin 2”, or a “9-week fetal loss”) there is a juxtaposition of grief for the baby/s who died,
Neonatal Butterfly Project

Elvis Presley & Cristiano Ronaldo - twins, butterflies and baby loss

More than 15 years ago I started working with a team to explore parent feelings and experiences about the time when the NICU team felt it appropriate to discuss the option of withdrawing/stopping active intensive care for their sick baby. The research ethics committee were hesitant suggesting that we might upset parents if we reminded them their baby had died … I found the research experience deeply humbling on many levels, and I learned much more in that study than I expected. I learned from ac
Neonatal Butterfly Project

Baby Loss & the meaning of life

All about me! I qualified MBBS 1990, started paediatrics 1991, & did my first NICU job 1992. I was utterly terrified those first few weeks, but worked with some brilliant nurses who looked after me, and an inspirational consultant Edmund Hey - one of the pioneers of neonatology (seminal work on resuscitation and thermal management in the 1960s!). We worked long hours as SHOs (residents) - 24 hours on, 24 hours off, for 2 weeks, knew the babies and families inside out, and then 5 daytime shi

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