Neonatal Unit

Our Neonatal Unit is based at Midland Metropolitan University Hospital and provides specialist support to babies born too soon, small or sick and their parents or carers. We promote Family Integrated Care (FiCare) whereby we empower parents to build a close and loving relationship by educating and supporting them to become involved in their baby’s care, enjoying momentous moments such as Kangaroo Care, participating in ward rounds and tending to their baby’s needs which can involve taking their temperature, changing, bathing and feeding, early breast milk expression and breastfeeding.

We offer carers room facilities so they are able to stay overnight with their baby to increase their confidence before being discharged. We also offer bespoke training for skills such as tube feeding and home oxygen and these skills are supported by the completion of competency documents.

Babies who need this support at home will then be under the care of the Neonatal Community Outreach Team. The team of specialist nurses offer guidance and help as the baby leaves hospital and returns home. We also host a Neonatal Discharge clinic which helps parents or carers to maintain a link with our specialist teams post discharge where your baby may be invited back to the hospital for measurements and blood tests.

We also offer families free parking, food and snacks and loan electric breast pumps to take home to support their feeding journey.

A specialist Infant Feeding team are on hand to support families to express and breastfeed leading to healthier outcomes. As part of our discharge process we also educate our parents by delivering the STORK programme which empowers parents to keep their baby safe at home covering topics such as safe sleep, safe car travel.

For some families we wont be the first Neonatal Unit they have experienced as they may be transferred from another unit. We work closely to ensure continuity of care so we ask families to bring their Neonatal Journey document with them.

Infection Prevention and Control

The babies we care for are extremely vulnerable, so we do ask all parents, carers and visitors to respect and adhere to our strict handwashing guidelines and visiting regulations in order to ensure we protect the babies we care for.

Other leaflets can be found as part of the Maternity service page.

Contacts

You can contact the neonatal unit at any time of the day or night for an update on your baby.

Neonatal Unit: 0121 507 5100.

Low dependency (cot nursery): 0121 507 5092