Half-way through my month in the NICU and I never want to leave!

So far, this has been, hands down, the most amazing rotation of my medical school career.  I have amazingly wonderful patients and families, just as inspiring 'teachers' in the NICU NNP's and neonatologists, and patient and encouraging nurses who care infinitely about the welfare of their patients.

Many of the NNP's with whom I am working this month have been working here, in the NICU, for more than 20 years, some more than 30 years.   They have seen neonatology grow through infancy into the well-respected and research-backed pediatric subspecialty that it is today.  It is a rapidly evolving field, as it has been since it's establishment.  The advent of several key therapeutics, such as artificial surfactant, has spun the practice of neonatology from one of many poor outcomes to miraculous rescues of the most fragile lives to challenging the ethics of saving the earliest of babies.

One thing I have witnessed in my two weeks on this rotation is the involvement in the March of Dimes organization with every family whose child is admitted.  I have long respected this organization and am anxious to contribute to it on a professional level, but I am also certain that the role they play in the lives of families present and future is monumental to parents struggling to understand the why, how, and what of their respective situations.  I am grateful that my future specialty has such and organization with whom to partner.

The most precious twin baby girls were my first patients of the month.  As of earlier this week, they have both graduated to the "Continuing Care Nursery,"  where they can continue to practice eating, growing and prove that they remember to breath as they should.  I am no longer responsible for their medical care, but with their parents' blessing I have asked if I can stop by for the occasional visit to check in on them.  Their parents are beautiful people and, I'm certain, are going to do fabulously with these adorable little girls.

They will always hold a special place in my heart, as I told their parents, as my first ever neonatology patients.  For someone who has been longing for the day when I can enter the field of neonatology officially, recalling the course of these sweet babies will be a memory I call on when the day is not going as well or when I need a reminder of why I chose this field.  It also has served as a perfect motivation to me to in this, my last year, of medical school.  With graduation now just 182 days away (almost exactly 6 month!), it would be easy to coast in, finish up my interviews, submit my Match lists and wait for June to arrive.  Instead, the needs of these little babies has my brain churning with ideas for ways to get involved with the specialty even before I know where I'll be entering pediatric residency in the fall.  If something that weighs a mere 2 pounds has the grit to beat their odds, you can bet that I'm going to work as hard as they are at giving them every chance to succeed.  I think I have my work cut out for me!