The Diary Game | 12/12/2025 || My Experience in Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) Today.

Hello beautiful Steemians, I want to share with you how my day went and my experiences in the SCBU unit today. At 6am I woke up from bed, prayed, took my bath, ate, and went to work.

Breakfast

I arrived at the hospital at 8:02am today, where I was posted to a new ward named the special care baby unit (SCBU). This is a department or area in a hospital designed to care for babies who need extra support but don't require full neonatal intensive care. Such babies include premature babies, babies with jaundice, babies who have respiratory issues, feeding difficulties, and babies with meconium aspiration or at risk of infection. So when I and my colleagues arrived at the ward, we were warmly welcomed, oriented, and taken around the ward to show and teach us some of the equipment that was in the ward.

Some of the equipment used in the ward

We mate a four-day-old baby who was admitted to the ward with the diagnosis of meconium aspiration and jaundice. Meconium aspiration occurs when a newborn inhales his/her first stool, which is thick, sticky, and greenish, into the lungs during delivery, causing respiratory distress and jaundice which refers to the yellowish discoloration of the skin and sclera (mucous membrane).

The four day old baby with jaundice

The baby was placed in his cage under a photo radiant warmer, which acts as the direct sunlight the baby needs for the treatment of jaundice. I looked closely at the baby, and I observed the baby's eyes were yellowish, but the baby looked very healthy to me. Then I asked if it is necessary to treat jaundice after all since the baby is healthy, and I was informed that jaundice, if not treated early, may lead to cerebral palsy (damage to the brain functions). Shortly a nice and smart doctor walked into the ward to check the status of the baby when we was done with his examination, he gathered us together with the younger doctors and began to teach us specifically about jaundice, and when the session was over, we were assigned different topics to read on for better understanding, and at 2pm our shifts ended.

Lunch and dinner

When I got back home in the afternoon, I freshened up, ate, read, rested, and tried to discuss what I learned with my family members until evening. They were all so happy because they learned something today about their health because jaundice is not only found in babies alone, but it can also be found in adults as well. Later this evening after the discussion, I took some snacks, wrote my article, and went to bed.

Thank you.