—
I grew up during a time that iPads, cell phones, and WIFI was viewed as science fiction. Many of the items I come across today I had first seen on Star Trek (the next generation), Aliens, and the Matrix. While Zoey’s isolette is high tech and includes all the latest gadgets and gizmos it isn’t far off from what she would have been in 80 years ago.
Working at the local library I find a lot of items that are going to be discarded or recycled. A few weeks ago, a collection of parenting pamphlets from the 1930s and 1940s were donated and placed in the bin for recycling. Items like these, while fascinating to read, are difficult to sell in the bookstore. Flipping through the pages I found two pages in the back of an 80-page booklet about caring for preemie/ undersized babies. In one portion explaining what to do if your baby stops breathing or turns blue, it stated “do NOT swing your baby through the air.” I’m glad to see how far we have come in such a short period of time.
Along with the text was a diagram of an isolette, make out of metal and lined with hot water bags to regulate the temperature. This booklet was printed in 1943 and isolettes like these only started to be used in 1903 on Coney Island. The technology had been around before then in Europe when doctors started to used incubators for premature babies in the 1870s. Thanks to the World Fair the technology was brought to the United States but was still difficult to convince doctors to use because of the high infant mortality rate. The display was run by Dr. Courney alongside the freak shows well known on the boardwalk during that time. People would pay a few pennies to see the tiny babies behind glass windows who were receiving round the clock care by doctors and nurses hired by Dr. Courney. After forty years of his display and working in the field to improve the design of the incubators these machines started to make their way into major hospitals.
In 1943 a preemie was described as any new born that weighed less than 5 ½ pounds. Zoey was born at 1 pound 5 ounces. Her odds of surviving in 1943 was close to zero. That isn’t to say that people still didn’t try. I have read stories of people using wood burning stoves to keep a micro-preemie’s body warm. Because the brain isn’t fully developed a micro preemie doesn’t have the suckling reflex to breasts feed and needed to be feed through a feeding tube or dropper.
Skipping ahead 80 years, things have become a technological wonder we would have seen in science fiction movies and shows twenty years ago. The touch screens and sensors I viewed on Star Trek are now reality. Isolettes have a plastic lid that can rise in the air for easy access like the sleeping chambers in the movie Alien. Plastic bags cover the micro preemie’s body for the first days of its life like something out of the Matrix. Unlike other parts of our culture science fiction has a tendency to become reality if given an opportunity and enough time.
A recent article popped up in my news feed describing an experiment in Japan where sheep fetuses were raised to new born age in artificial wombs. No joke. During my conversations with the staff in the NICU I have been told several times about how Zoey wouldn’t have been able to live if she was born before 23 weeks. When I asked what it would take to have a baby survive being born that early and the reply was “an artificial womb.” In the days that followed the staff was reading the article I told them about and they were wondering when they would start seeing this new artificial womb in the NICU and how it would work. It might be decades away from human use but give it enough time and it will appear.
Zoey’s plastic world might appear to be nothing more than a fancy incubator that could hatch chicken eggs, but without it and the improvements made over the years she wouldn’t be alive today. I still cringe when I read stories about doctors refusing to do anything for micro-preemies because of their age or size. What they don’t realize is that it is ones who try and eventually succeed that are remembered and save more lives long after they are gone. I am thankful for men like Dr. Courney who took a fatal diagnosis and changed it to eventually have a 75% survival rate. This is how science and technology works, not accepting the current results and working towards making the world a better place.
Photo: Pixabay
Enjoy reading the history on premie care.