Dr. Nancy Wright: Meconium aspiration is a problem with the baby’s lungs. Babies have accumulated in the course of the development in neuro a large amount of meconium or this dark, sticky, black green stool. They are supposed to wait until they are born to pass it, sometimes they don’t and it gets into the amniotic fluid, and then the babies take practice breathing motions and if they are in distress they’ll take deep breathing motions and get that meconium into their lungs, that’s called an aspiration, and that meconium sets off a nasty pneumonia, which can be very, very serious.
Clorinda Merino: Well, we’re here because we just delivered the baby on Monday and when he was born, he was born with, he swallowed some meconium and so they had to bring him in here because he has aspired it, I think he aspired it and so they had to suck it out of his system and we put him on antibiotics and so he has been here since Monday night and we’ve been staying in coming down here to feed him and all the way coming to is basically be with him and breastfeed him so that he can get some milk and we can be with him and bind with him.
Dr. Nancy Wright: Well, meconium aspiration is not that uncommon, now that we’re better and we know a little bit better about delivery and how to suck babies out and make sure we get all that mucous out initially, we don’t have nearly as much as we used to. We also are better at treating it, we know to treat it very vigorously with antibiotics to keep baby’s oxygen levels nice and high and to prevent something called pulmonary hypertension, which is high blood pressure from irritation of the meconium in the lungs. So, we’re getting much better at treating it. It can be very serious, babies have had to go on artificial heart lung machines because of this and sometimes they died in the past; very few died today in this.
Clorinda Merino: It was very scary, it was very scary to see them with tubes and just you know the whole system here, although it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful care, it’s scary to see him here when you’re used to thinking that you’re going to have a a natural birth and everything is going to be perfect and there is not going to be any problems.
Dr. Nancy Wright: In Sebastian’s case, we’ve managed to suck him out very efficiently and he was only on the ventilator for less than a day and he is just now getting of oxygen. His lungs are healing very quickly.
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