Special Care Nursery

Level II Special Care Nursery

The Childbirth Program at Queensway Carleton Hospital is equipped to deliver babies at 34 weeks of gestation and greater and can provide specialized care to newborns with a variety of health issues. If your baby has been admitted to the Special Care Nursery, he or she will require some close observation using specialized equipment.

We recognize that the monitors and equipment may make you nervous. Please don't hesitate to ask questions that you may have about what you see, or do not understand.

The care team in the Special Care Nursery

The Childbirth Program is committed to providing family centered and supportive care. While your baby is admitted to the Special Care Nursery, the team that will be caring for him/her will consist of a Pediatrician, a Registered Nurse, a Pharmacist and sometimes a Respiratory Therapist. If you wish to speak to the Pediatrician directly, please leave a message with your baby's Nurse.

Your baby's health care - we want you to be involved

Feel free to ask any questions and express any concerns about your baby.

Please try to come in at your baby's care times, so that you can practice feeding and changing his/her diaper.

We have a refrigerator in the Nursery to store breast milk. Please let your baby's Nurse know if you have some pumped milk to be put in the fridge.

We encourage you to bring in special items for your baby, for example baby clothes, cozy blankets, diapers, wipes and pacifiers.

Equipment in the Special Care Nursery

Most of the babies admitted to the Special Care Nursery will be in an incubator to start. The incubator is a way of keeping the baby warm without blankets or clothes and it also allows us to monitor your baby more closely. We set the inside to a temperature that is exactly what your baby needs.

Babies may be attached to several wires or cables that connect to a monitor so that it can give us information about your baby's heart and breathing which then appears on the monitor screen.

A place for parents

While your baby is admitted to the Special Care Nursery, you may use our Courtesy Rooms to rest. Please recognize we only have two rooms; therefore they will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and they may need to be shared throughout the day with other parents of Special Care Nursery babies.

Contacting the Special Care Nursery

When you call the Special Care Nursery, the Nurse will ask you to read off the numbers on your identification band to verify that you are someone entitled to the baby's confidential information. Please do not remove your identification band as long as the baby is admitted as this will be your only valid identifier when you call or visit your baby. Our phone number is 613-721-2000, ext 2118. If your baby has been admitted to the Special Care Nursery, please feel free to call anytime.