We understand the stress and anxiety that you may be feeling while knowing that your baby is away from home, being in the NICU. It may feel overwhelming trying to understand your babies care and their current needs during this moment in time. With this website I hope to answer your questions on how physical therapy and intervention services are designed towards helping your baby while they are here, along with guiding mothers like you with ways that you can implement positive touch and comfortable handling during your visits to help build your relationship and continue to guide them along their path towards graduating from the NICU and thriving within their home.

What is the evidence behind the reliability and validity of these tools?

The TIMP assessment tool has a relatively strong predictive validity specifically at three months of age, along with a high sensitivity (ruling out) for predicting motor performance and related deficits that would occur at twelve months of age.⁴ This assessment tool has the ability to detect smaller degrees of change, which has commonly been found as a useful tool for infants who have trisomy 21. The HINE has been a highly reliable tool used with both preterm and term infants who would benefit from early detection of suspected neurological impairments.² This tool has had relatively good reliability when assessing for asymmetrical movement patterns who may have increased risk factors and detecting diagnoses like cerebral palsy.

What can I do as a mother to help my infant?

The best things that you can do as a mother for your preterm infant is provide them with positive reassuring touch. This is a crucial part for their development, especially for babies who have been born prematurely and are no longer experiencing a full term pregnancy with total body surface contact. Some other ways you could help would be providing containment during nursing assessments, holding and bonding with your infant (skin-to-skin, massage, breastfeed), reading them books which creates an emotional bond where they can listen to their mother, along with having visual stimuli from the pages.

What is the difference between Occupational Therapy (OT) and Physical Therapy (PT)?

There is a lot of overlap in terms of what OT and PT do while in the NICU setting, some of which include infant containment, gentle infant massage, range of motion, positive touch, positioning, and strengthening. Down the road as your infant gets older, OT typically focuses more on fine motor tasks, improving sensory processing, increasing state regulation, splinting if needed for optimal positioning, and improving coordination. While PT focuses more on gross motor tasks, habilitative and rehabilitative treatments, improving strength and range of motion, developmental skills, and optimizing their preferred patterns of movement.

Why does my baby need therapy ?

During your infants time in the NICU, we are trying to help your baby lay down a developmentally appropriate foundation while they are still here in order for them to progress through milestones following their stay in the hospital. This includes guiding them in the right direction to help prevent common habits that commonly develop after spending a long period of time in the hospital including tightness, head preference, negative touch experiences, difficulties with vision, and state regulation.

What does it mean for an infant to be in an appropriate state regulation? What can I look for and what can I do to adjust their comfort level?

Your infants ability to manage their level of arousal in response to an internal or external stimuli is what provides them with stability and regulation. Babies typically show what is known as stress signs, if they become over stimulated which appears as crying, saluting, change in vitals, change in coloration, irritability, grimacing, yawning, hiccuping, frantic, etc. These signs are things you should look out for and adjust within your care, typically done by providing them with comfortability such as lowering the lights, limiting the aromas, lowering your voice, providing deep input, maintaining their body flexed, or minimizing the amount of stimuli provided so instead of bouncing them and talking to them take away one of those.