Caring for our Smallest Patients

Bringing a new life into the world is a miraculous journey. Each year, more than 450 of our community's most medically fragile infants begin the journey with a stay in the Children’s Hospital Oakland Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The NICU is at the core of our work; it is here that we care for the patients that no other institution can: the most medically complex, most vulnerable pre-term infants.

As a regional referral center for neonatal intensive care, Children’s NICU also serves full-term babies with congenital abnormalities that require surgery and those that are devastatingly ill. Children’s pediatric intensive care survival rate is one of the highest in the country, thanks to our team of specially trained experts, cutting-edge technological resources, and range of advanced newborn services available. 

The sophisticated medical interventions that keep babies in the NICU alive can be overwhelming and stressful for babies and parents alike. Our goal is to make the experience in the nursery as sensitive to the child’s development needs as we can, while empowering families in the care of their babies. 

Our Developmental Support Program provides behavioral development and parent support efforts to reduce the distress and pain of babies whose survival may require months of care in our nursery. The Gentle Hands Program provides expert individual guidance for parents’ first physical interactions with their child, helping parents learn to touch, hold, massage and bathe their tiny babies in the NICU.

In many hospitals, families are left outside of the care circle. At Children’s Hospital Oakland, we ensure that the infants’ families become an integral part of the team caring for their child.