Of course a pilot light woke up when I tuned in Hands on the incubator of the EO. At that broadcaster they will find that every life should be saved, no matter how small and vulnerable. And before you know it, you’ll be faced with the question of when in pregnancy a child is a child according to the heavenly father. Not that the series even mentions a single word about religion, it was my own reservations beforehand.
In the neonatology intensive care unit in the Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital, where Anne-Mar Zwart is allowed to walk, the secular law applies that stipulates that doctors in the Netherlands must treat babies from 24 weeks old. be allowed to to deal with. A normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, the life of an extremely premature child is anything but certain and is in the hands of high-tech equipment and people who know what to do. It is immediately clear that the film crew has not been walking around here for five days, but for weeks and probably months. As close as Anne-Mar Zwart can get to Lianne and John, Edith’s parents, born at 26 weeks, 940 grams. The mother has braced herself with make-up and red nail polish, but hovers somewhere between flimsy optimism and despair. Changing the baby together is a highlight. The parents deftly fidget between the tubes, IVs and beeping devices as if they never did anything else.
The question is whether parents want to be congratulated on their much prematurely born child who may die much too early. Is a congratulation too premature? Their daughter is here, these parents say. And they are happy about it. They have therefore decided to send birth announcements. You don’t have to ask the nurse whether parents want to be congratulated. For mother Lianne’s birthday they hang streamers on the incubator and make a card with the imprint of her child’s tiny feet.
A bit crazy to call it luck, but during the recordings a case arose that the doctors of Erasmus MC had never experienced before. A pregnant mother with serious complications from corona. She is kept in a coma and is on the heart-lung machine in the intensive care unit when the labor starts spontaneously. The neonatologists hoped that the child would “stay indoors” a little longer, but there is no stopping it. “The child wants to save itself,” says gynecologist-perinatologist Hans Duvekot. Two teams are quickly rigged. One for the mother. And in a room next door one for her child.
Daddy is not forgotten
No obligatory interviews with the doctors and nurses about how hard or rewarding their work is. You see what they do. First the mother, Jennifer. Halfway through the delivery she has a bleeding, the heart rate of the baby drops. Ten people at the bedside. The woman in the middle says: “Knife. Knife. Knife. Sterile gauze. Now sterile gauze. clamps.” emergency caesarean section. And then: “The baby is born.”
Hóllen with a bloody bundle to the room next door. Neonatologist plus nurses. Like they’re doing a round of quiz questions. “Heart action?” No. “Do you hear incoming breath sounds?” Also not. Three pairs of hands on a very small body to get the heart going. The father, Bonito, stands watching, his own father holding him. He is not forgotten in all concentrated consternation. “Daddy, come join us,” says the neonatologist. After eight minutes they have the girl breathing. The father is gently pushed into her life. “Just take a picture of your daughter, sir.” They know: her face is not yet covered in patches and plasters. Now she’s alive. “What’s her name?” Vajen, says the father. “But whether you write that with a V or an F… ”, he wonders in despair. “I need Jennifer for that.” The IC doctors are still busy with her life.