Monitoring the tiniest babies
Livecams bring peace of mind to preemies’ parents
Jennifer Pagel releases her infant Liam’s arm from his swaddle, turns him on his right side to help with his digestion and places a pacifier in his mouth.
Liam is the biggest and, according to Jennifer Pagel, 29, and her husband, Zachary, 33, the feistiest of quadruplets born to the couple on March 5.
The Pagels have been at The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care in Oklahoma City unit nearly every waking hour since the quadruplets were
born 29 weeks into Jennifer Pagel’s pregnancy.
But when the parents return to their Oklahoma City home at night to sleep, the babies remain within sight.
That’s because above each baby, a camera affixed to a curved arm streams live, secure footage accessible via computer or mobile device, anywhere, and at any time.
“Part of me is really ready for them to come home, but I know they’re getting everything they need here,” said Zachary Pagel, laying a soothing palm on his son Bennett’s head.
The Pagels say the cameras have added an additional layer of reassurance in the roller-coaster experience of having quads in the NICU.
The “Nicview” system rolled out with a few cameras at Children’s in 2014. A smash hit with parents, the hospital now owns 50 cameras for use in the 96-bed unit.
There is a waitlist, and parents trade off when a baby is doing better, said Jamie Kilpatrick, the director of patient care and child readiness at the NICU.
“They’ve been overwhelmingly grateful,” Kilpatrick said. “The parents feel comforted by the cameras.”
Children’s is the only Level IV NICU in the state, meaning the hospital can provide surgical repair of acquired or complex congenital conditions. Babies are transported from all over the state, which means the fragile patients’ supporters can tune in, despite the distance.
Nicview systems have been operating around the country since 2011. Natus Medical Inc. acquired the startup that created the system in 2015 to expand its offerings in the newborn market. A scan of headlines suggests the systems are gaining traction across the country. Sometimes local groups like Rotary clubs or children’s foundations pay for the systems, while in other cases, the hospital picks up the tab.
Children’s, the first hospital in Oklahoma to live-stream its tiniest patients, paid $50,000 for each 25-camera bundle, spokeswoman Vallery Brown said.
Elsewhere in Oklahoma, hospital officials have researched purchasing cameras for NICUs, including those at Integris Health and Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City and The Children’s Hospital at Saint Francis in Tulsa, but nothing is definite, according to spokespeople for those hospitals.
The U.S. ranks high among Western countries in the rate of premature births, said Kris Sekar, medical director of the NICU at Children’s.
Babies who survive early birth can face lifelong problems, including breathing problems, cerebral palsy, vision loss and intellectual delays, according to the March of Dimes. In the U.S. and Oklahoma, one in 10 babies is born prematurely.
In part because premature births are common in the U.S., the care for preemies has improved vastly in the last decade, said Sekar, who has tended to the Pagels’ quadruplets since the babies’ birth by cesarean section.
The Pagels’ quadruplets, said Sekar, are doing remarkably well.
Harrison, one of the quadruplets, is the only brother who required a tracheal tube in his windpipe and the help of a breathing machine.
Placement or removal of the tube wouldn’t be on camera.
During medical procedures, the cameras are switched off as not to alarm those tuning in, Sekar said.
There is no sound for the same reason.
Sekar doesn’t see a downside to the camera system since the connections are secure and only accessible to those provided a login and password.
“There’s nothing like seeing your own baby, live,” Sekar said. “You don’t have to be at the bedside. You can be on another continent.”
Children’s started tracking the cameras’ use in April 2015. Since then, they’ve racked up more 81,400 logins from around the world.
February alone brought 8,000 baby viewing sessions from 51 Oklahoma cities, 24 states and the District of Columbia, and six countries, including Mexico, Greece, Guatemala, Spain, Cameroon and the United Kingdom.
In the hospital, the Pagel babies continue to gain grams, and, their parents say, tiny personalities.
Liam, in his crib, is feisty but calms quickly; Bennett and Declan like keeping it calm in their incubators, and Harrison is the little fighter who enjoys a change of scenery, like when his mom rolls him on his side.
The odds for quadruplets born after fertility treatment as in the Pagels’ case are 1 in 60,000 births. Naturally, they occur just once in 11 to 15 million births, Sekar said.
The odds of the Pagels, along with the babies’ out-of-state grandparents, enjoying the comfort of their quad baby cams is 100 percent.