3,000 kids participate in Rainbow's 'Reunion of NICU Babies'

Bengaluru: Reunions are quite common but this 'Reunion' was a special and unique one. For the first time, Rainbow Children's Hospital, Bannerghatta Road, organised a 'The Big Little Reunion' on Saturday where the participants were those having a longer stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Thanks to the excellent care of doctors and staff, these babies are now healthy and doing fine. These babies were accompanied by parents for this first-ever NICU Babies' Reunion.

To begin with, more than 3,000 babies treated at RCH's Neonatal ICU were welcomed by the. RJ Sriram performed live at the venue. Hospital doctors introduced some of the kids who had a medically challenging stay at NICU and are now completely fine.

One of the star attractions of the day was a 500-gram warrior. On Dec 31, 2020. The baby's mother Ajitha would never have expected that she would have her new year with her son because she had just completed six months of gestation. The baby boy she gave birth to barely weighed 500 grams. But the parents decided that they would give their best.

The little boy was a fighter and he defined all odds. Gradually, his lungs grew with ventilation and surfactant and his intestines matured to tolerate mother's milk. Gradually he grew in the NICU and was a dream come true for his parents. Sadly, the deadly Covid pandemic struck havoc. When the baby had gained a weight of 1.2 kg and turned two months old, his father had Covid and the baby was infected.

The growing lungs of the baby were hit badly and damaged. Again, the baby had been on ventilation for a week. But the optimism and hope of the parents never waned and the little boy emerged victorious from Covid too. After more than 100 days of NICU stay, the little boy was back home. He has now completed his first birthday and had a brain development on a par with normal kids.

During the second wave of the Covid pandemic, many pregnant mothers had Covid infections which resulted in premature birth of babies. "At the NICU in Rainbow Children's Hospital, we had 14 premature babies less than 1.5 kg with the smallest baby weighing 900 gm. With prematurity along with Covid infection the lungs were poorly developed requiring complicated ventilation with surfactant administration.

At RCH, we believe that mothers and the baby should be together at the earliest. Once the mother was symptom free, she was encouraged to spend time with the baby in a separate isolation room without spreading infection to the other babies," said RCH doctors