What’s Happening: NICU Basics with Jasmine Braun RN

Welcome to my “News and Events” Blog! As a doula and childbirth educator, an amazing part of my job is to not only provide my clients with the information needed for them to make informed decisions, but to connect them with professionals with the skills and knowledge to make those decisions a reality. I am incredibly passionate about my own continued education and spend a lot of time attending webinars, classes, and other birth working events! There are so many, extremely unique, and wonderful people filled with passion for every step of your birth journey hosting amazing events, both virtual and in-person, for pregnant persons and birth workers to connect and learn! Today, I would like to introduce you to one of them, Jasmine Braun, RN.

Childbirth in an incredibly unique experience each and every time for each and every parent. A woman giving birth for the second time often finds the second pregnancy to be easier or harder, with more or less morning sickness, or completely different cravings. The baby may be bigger, smaller, or sitting in a different position. There are just so many variables, it is nearly impossible to walk into a birth 100% prepared.

Sometimes these variations are as small as a 6 hour labor versus a 8 hour labor, but sometimes the changes are quite large. Childbirth education teachers, doulas, and other education/preparation based professionals often combat this uncertainty with malleable birth plans and general preparation on a variety of possibilities. This often includes showing our clients forceps, walking them through their options for c-section births, and other basic exposures to tools that might become necessary in their pregnancies and births. There is, however, a large knowledge gap that many birth professionals aren’t addressing, NICU preparation.

I experienced this first hand at my very first hospital birth as a doula, which you can read all about here. My client, Cassie, is a dear friend who had asked me to serve as her fertility and birth doula for her second pregnancy and subsequent rainbow baby. She was in a car accident around 35 weeks into her pregnancy, followed by her waters suddenly breaking with blood in it a few days later. What followed was a rush of interventions, a long induced labor, and a thankfully short stay in the NICU. I remember feeling incredibly grateful for my thorough doula training up until the last, when Cassie was cuddling a happily-full baby Harvey to her breast and a woman leaned over to take him to the NICU. Cassie turned to me for comfort and information, her eyes expecting me to be as prepared for this situation as I had been for the rest of them.

But I wasn’t.

I had no idea what the protocol was. When or how she would see Harvey again, what the breastfeeding protocol would be, not even generic “most NICU’s work like this” information. I knew NOTHING. And I was furious with myself.

Thankfully, we were in an amazing hospital with an incredible staff that took the time to answer all of our questions before taking the baby from the room. We also weren’t in an emergency situation where the staff wouldn’t have the time to stop and explain to us even if they wanted to. I learned a lot that day. I mean, it was my FIRST hospital birth. But I couldn’t help but feel that, in the end, I had dropped the ball. I just wasn’t sure what to do about it. I tucked the problem away in my brain for the time being, something to solve at a later date.

Last year, as I sat down to write a fully comprehensive CBE class, I took the problem off the shelf to contemplate. As a doula, it is my job to educate myself as much as possible and provide my clients with reliable sources. As a childbirth educator, it’s much the same but without the in-person support during and after my student’s labor. I needed to do what I could to teach myself and my student’s about unplanned, or planned, stays in the NICU. If you are one of my subscribers, you may remember reading in a previous entry about how I have some pretty amazingly smart and talented sisters. Well, one of them is a pretty fantastic woman named Jasmine Braun who just happens to be a NICU nurse.

Jasmine Braun, RN, works at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at OPR in Olathe, Kansas and is currently studying for her ND at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. When asked if she considers herself a geek, Jasmine joked that anyone who took organic chemistry is at least a little geeky and admitted to trying to spend most of her free time bettering herself, though she does enjoy settling in to watch a good movie. She is a Olathe resident, enjoying life as a newlywed to software engineer Brandon Braun and mommy to their rescue puppers Ellie. They had a beautiful wedding, with the best maid of honor anyone could ask for.

As a NICU nurse, Jasmine has seen far too many parents coming into her NICU with zero preparation. We sat down to talk about it, collaborating for my CBE class. We weren’t even halfway through the information before realizing this needed to be a class of it’s own available to the birth world in general through KC Women’s Ministry’s Enrichment Workshops. So, she put together an amazing training, teaching birth workers how to best prepare our clients for potential NICU stays, whether it is an expected or unexpected stay.

When asked about what she hopes to pass onto her audience, Jasmine answered that “No parent wants their baby to end up in the NICU, so even with babies that are doing great and just need a little extra help, it can feel completely overwhelming and exhausting to a new family. We try to help the most vulnerable population and support the family unit at the same time, because the NICU is typically the most difficult for everyone involved.”

When putting together my CBE, Jasmine helped me to learn the different machines and tools used in the NICU. She answered questions about what it is like for most families and talked me through breastfeeding, visiting baby, and other topics that would have been instrumental to know when supporting Cassie. She also hopes to help birth workers, such as doulas and CBEs, understand nurses a bit better. “Sometimes nurses seem cruel or hardened, but they’ve survived in this traumatic field for so long,” Jasmine writes. “It’s easy to judge the nurse who is exhausted and stuck in their routine, but every single one of us got into our fields because we have a heart of servitude for others. We cannot forget that we have a common goal - the health and safety of our patients.”

This workshop is a must-have training for any birth worker who’s clients or students may end up in the NICU. So, every birth worker. Learn more by clicking here!

Get your tickets for this workshop, “NICU Basics with Jasmine Braun, RN” today!

As always,

Thank you so much for reading and God Bless!