Why was I cooled down as a newborn baby?
March 5, 2018 2:00 AM Subscribe
My mother has always told me that after she gave birth to me, the doctors snatched me away in a hurry. She wasn't clear why. Later they took her to where I was - inside a small cold bed by myself where she saw me shivering with cold. She was not allowed to grab me of course. Days later they returned me to her.
What happened?
Background: My mother has always told me this story and only recently have I started to think about how strange this is. When I asked some knowledgeable people they suggested that the doctors thought I had had brain damage and what I had undergone was Hypothermia Therapy.
Additional background: My mother didn't speak much English which is why she was so confused. My dad spoke less. This was in the late 60's which seems extremely early for hypothermia therapy although the hospital was La Jolla Scripps which was and remains a great research hospital.
Was this too early? Could I have been cooled for another reason? Was I part of some experiment? *cue Frankenstein organ*
Any help appreciated. I contacted the hospital but my records have long since been destroyed. The doctors involved are all deceased.
Background: My mother has always told me this story and only recently have I started to think about how strange this is. When I asked some knowledgeable people they suggested that the doctors thought I had had brain damage and what I had undergone was Hypothermia Therapy.
Additional background: My mother didn't speak much English which is why she was so confused. My dad spoke less. This was in the late 60's which seems extremely early for hypothermia therapy although the hospital was La Jolla Scripps which was and remains a great research hospital.
Was this too early? Could I have been cooled for another reason? Was I part of some experiment? *cue Frankenstein organ*
Any help appreciated. I contacted the hospital but my records have long since been destroyed. The doctors involved are all deceased.
Best answer: were you clothed when she saw you shivering? The most normal story I can come up with is you were obviously jaundiced and they put you under the UV lamps. You would only have a diaper on in that case and if they had turned off the lamps before she saw you and you felt the difference in temp and were shivering.
posted by Wilder at 3:09 AM on March 5, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by Wilder at 3:09 AM on March 5, 2018 [11 favorites]
It sounds like something done to modulate an escalating fever.
posted by Chitownfats at 4:22 AM on March 5, 2018
posted by Chitownfats at 4:22 AM on March 5, 2018
Response by poster: Sorry for not being clearer about the cold. My mom says that it was like a little icy bed - a bed of ice she insists although I doubt I was actually placed directly on ice. When I ask her to recall, she swears ice was involved and that nurses were attending me but had told her she must leave me alone for now. It makes sense that what she remembers most clearly is being told she cannot touch her child and this sounds like my mom might have been a bit deluded but she was clear also about being kept away for me for a couple days until the doctors reassured her that I was ok now from...whatever.
posted by vacapinta at 5:29 AM on March 5, 2018
posted by vacapinta at 5:29 AM on March 5, 2018
Best answer: Chances are it was phototherapy for jaundice. The light is blue & would make a white sheet look like ice. You would also have been uncovered as they need the light to hit all the skin. Newborn babies don't shiver to warm themselves. They have stores of brown adipose fat to keep them warm so don't have the cues to shiver to warm themselves (which is why it's important to dress babies warmly), any shivering you did would most likely have just been the weird twitches & shivers babies do to trying to work out the whole nervous system thing.
The UV light treatment is and was a pretty common treatment for jaundice & a much more likely solution than ice therapies.
posted by wwax at 6:36 AM on March 5, 2018 [17 favorites]
The UV light treatment is and was a pretty common treatment for jaundice & a much more likely solution than ice therapies.
posted by wwax at 6:36 AM on March 5, 2018 [17 favorites]
Best answer: I agree with the phototherapy theory. Another clue that that is correct would be if you had anything covering your eyes.
A hospital bassinet or incubator could look like it was made of ice to someone unfamiliar with them.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:29 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
A hospital bassinet or incubator could look like it was made of ice to someone unfamiliar with them.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:29 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Best answer: As said above, babies don't shiver from cold (it's just not a reflex they've developed yet) and hypothermia therapy looks more like this (and is for much more severe conditions that would have had other side effects). Your mother almost certainly misparsed what happened (and her memory is almost certainly inaccurate and changed over the years and affected by what she thought at the time because that's how memory works). Phototherapy would have looked something like this, with blue lights that could definitely imply cold, and you were probably shaking in the way that babies shake, and your mom guessed wrong about what was happening.
posted by brainmouse at 7:54 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by brainmouse at 7:54 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Yeah, this is almost for sure the light blanket for jaundice therapy. Here's a picture of my son on it.
If you want to know what that was like, my son actually developed it about a week later, not because he was dehydrated but for another reason. We were at a lactation consult and although the nurse saw him pee, we both thought he looked a bit yellow and so she had them run the numbers. Once they came back from the lab she told me she thought we would both have to check into the post-partum floor.
I went downstairs to tell my husband, with the baby, and came back up to find a NICU nurse and resident standing by the elevator. The resident told me that he would explain everything in an hour while the nurse took my son from me. They undressed him as we went down the hall and then they put him into the incubator, above, on the lights, above, as they started to hook him up.
It turns out that his bilirubin levels were right at the threshold above which brain damage occurs. I had no idea about this at the time but jaundice is a big cause of cerebral palsy. He was in the NICU for a couple of days. Anyways, everything turned out fine (he's an active, healthy 7 year old) but I can imagine that with a language barrier and a less sensitive team, your parents would not have received all the information they needed if this was indeed the case.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:20 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
If you want to know what that was like, my son actually developed it about a week later, not because he was dehydrated but for another reason. We were at a lactation consult and although the nurse saw him pee, we both thought he looked a bit yellow and so she had them run the numbers. Once they came back from the lab she told me she thought we would both have to check into the post-partum floor.
I went downstairs to tell my husband, with the baby, and came back up to find a NICU nurse and resident standing by the elevator. The resident told me that he would explain everything in an hour while the nurse took my son from me. They undressed him as we went down the hall and then they put him into the incubator, above, on the lights, above, as they started to hook him up.
It turns out that his bilirubin levels were right at the threshold above which brain damage occurs. I had no idea about this at the time but jaundice is a big cause of cerebral palsy. He was in the NICU for a couple of days. Anyways, everything turned out fine (he's an active, healthy 7 year old) but I can imagine that with a language barrier and a less sensitive team, your parents would not have received all the information they needed if this was indeed the case.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:20 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]
One of my sons had mild jaundice when he was born, and they decided not to put him in the light bed. In shapshots from the first few days, he has a definite pumpkin-y shade to his complexion. (He isn't orange any more: now he's a teenager whose face turns red sometimes, but that's from yelling or running the mile.)
posted by wenestvedt at 10:31 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 10:31 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
My best friend has had both of her children go through something which sounds very similar to what you describe, both within the last 4 years. The treatment they had is called "Therapeutic Hypothermia", and is used to treat birth complications including Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (which is the reason my friend's kids had it). Their father describes his perception of it like this (this is from a public post he made about their first experience with the treatment):
"They got her settled in and asked me to step out for about 30 minutes, in order to insert an IV into her belly button (to be used for feeding) and start the body cooling process. (...) I arrived back in the room to my sweet little girl bare to the elements, aside from a diaper and numerous IV lines, 10 -15 wires stuck to various body parts, a mask giving her oxygen and a machine cooling her bed to a frosty temperature of 33 degrees Celsius. (...)Therapeutic hypothermia is a breakthrough procedure for potential HIE situations (as well as other birth complications) that had only become standard protocol in 2010. It involves inducing a mild hypothermia by cooling the body temperature to between 32-34 degrees Celsius for 72 hours, which slows the heart rate, metabolism and organ development ."
This sounds very similar to your mother's recollections, based on what you've said here. And both of my friend's kids are perfectly healthy now, with zero lasting effects of the HIE (as determined by extensive and regular developmental tests and screenings), so I think it is certainly possible that you could have had this treatment and not have any lingering signs or symptoms of the original problem.
The real area where this doesn't quite line up with your mothers recollection is the timeframe, since Therapeutic Hypothermia seems to be relatively recent as a standard procedure. The Wikipedia article on it mentions research dating back to the 1940s, and the wiki page you link to in your question suggests that hypothermia therapy for neonatal cases specifically was ongoing as early as the 50s. So I suppose it's possible that you were a part of early research or implementation?
posted by Dorinda at 12:51 PM on March 5, 2018
"They got her settled in and asked me to step out for about 30 minutes, in order to insert an IV into her belly button (to be used for feeding) and start the body cooling process. (...) I arrived back in the room to my sweet little girl bare to the elements, aside from a diaper and numerous IV lines, 10 -15 wires stuck to various body parts, a mask giving her oxygen and a machine cooling her bed to a frosty temperature of 33 degrees Celsius. (...)Therapeutic hypothermia is a breakthrough procedure for potential HIE situations (as well as other birth complications) that had only become standard protocol in 2010. It involves inducing a mild hypothermia by cooling the body temperature to between 32-34 degrees Celsius for 72 hours, which slows the heart rate, metabolism and organ development ."
This sounds very similar to your mother's recollections, based on what you've said here. And both of my friend's kids are perfectly healthy now, with zero lasting effects of the HIE (as determined by extensive and regular developmental tests and screenings), so I think it is certainly possible that you could have had this treatment and not have any lingering signs or symptoms of the original problem.
The real area where this doesn't quite line up with your mothers recollection is the timeframe, since Therapeutic Hypothermia seems to be relatively recent as a standard procedure. The Wikipedia article on it mentions research dating back to the 1940s, and the wiki page you link to in your question suggests that hypothermia therapy for neonatal cases specifically was ongoing as early as the 50s. So I suppose it's possible that you were a part of early research or implementation?
posted by Dorinda at 12:51 PM on March 5, 2018
My son was born at La Jolla Scripps! He was mildly jaundiced, and they only had him under UV light for a few hours. The blue light did make everything look "cold", and I'm sure in a fog of post-birth exhaustion one's brain could easily see something else.
Do you know that you were deliberately left to cool down and it wasn't just (I hate to say this) neglect?
At LJ Scripps, my post-birth experience and the way the nursing staff handled my son soon after he was born were simply atrocious (my OB even had to question one of the nurses as to why she was doing what she was doing), but I don't think this is at all a question of neglect.
posted by Everydayville at 1:44 PM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Do you know that you were deliberately left to cool down and it wasn't just (I hate to say this) neglect?
At LJ Scripps, my post-birth experience and the way the nursing staff handled my son soon after he was born were simply atrocious (my OB even had to question one of the nurses as to why she was doing what she was doing), but I don't think this is at all a question of neglect.
posted by Everydayville at 1:44 PM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don't know anything about this topic, but I've been reading all of the birth stories over at r/BabyBumps and this rang a bell. I went back and found the story I was thinking of - this woman describes her newborn receiving what she calls 'cooling therapy' for low oxygen. She specifically mentions not being allowed to touch him and him shivering.
posted by kitcat at 4:31 PM on March 5, 2018
posted by kitcat at 4:31 PM on March 5, 2018
when the same thing happened to me, the howling, guy-wrenching gaping void of hormone surges just when you are falling in love with that little defenceless scrap is so hard to articulate...these things stay for a very long time. Since then I have seen serious Post-partum problems from people abruptly separated from their babies, especially when they don't understand why that is....please re-assure her that what they were doing was for your benefit. I HATE that she is left with this image with no explanation!
posted by Wilder at 9:28 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Wilder at 9:28 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
« Older Best sources/book(s) for research on human... | Tips for living with a high-functioning... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Jubey at 2:26 AM on March 5, 2018