New kits help parents read to preemies, sick newborns
When little Julianna was born weeks too early, her mother Deanna Ganske was overwhelmed and puzzled by her role in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
“You kind of get shaken up. A lot of your instincts go on the back burner,” said Deanna Ganske, who sits on an NICU parent advisory group. Her daughter is now five and just started kindergarten.
If someone had handed her a book while she sat by her daughter’s side, she would have read it to Julianna, who was born by emergency caesarean section at 31 weeks gestation. Health professionals want to encourage more parents of preemies and sick newborns to read to their babies in the NICU, and a partnership between Alberta Health Services and the Edmonton Public Library is giving families more tools for doing so.
On Tuesday, the library expanded its Welcome Baby program to the NICU at Royal Alexandra Hospital. The program gives families a kit containing a story book, music CD, tote bag, suggested book lists and other literacy information.
Since 2014, the library has distributed 42,000 Welcome Baby kits, said library spokeswoman Heather McIntyre. Most families receive theirs while bringing babies to a public health centre for their two-month immunizations.
Ganske said some babies in intensive care were missing out.
Those babies are missing important language development skills that typically happen during the last few months in the womb and the first few months being toted around by their caregivers.
Babies begin to learn language by hearing their parents or caregivers’ voices and watching their mouths move while they make the sounds, said Dr. Amber Reichert, a neonatologist at the Stollery Children’s Hospital and medical director of the neonatal followup program. They don’t get the same level of interaction in the NICU.
When she sees pre-term babies later in childhood, many struggle with language development, she said. Research has shown the amount of communication infants and toddlers are exposed to can influence a child’s IQ and vocabulary 10 years later, she said.
She’s even started singing her way around the NICU to encourage more parents to do the same with their babies.
The library ultimately intends to expand the program to include Edmonton’s three other NICUs.