I was checking in with the nurses before rounds today to find out how my patients had done during the night when I had an interesting conversation. Most of the important information regarding "overnight events" are usually expressed in the first 60 seconds...the longer you let the nurses talk, the more trivial and, unfortunately, embarrassing things come out. So, I was getting the 4-1-1 on one of my little ones...She had had some spells of apnea and bradycardia, was tolerating her feedings well, had a normal EEG yesterday, and--oh,yeah--she is super stinky. The nurse starts going on and on about how stinky she is, how the stench is overwhelming to her and her parents, yada, yada, yada, and then she says this, "I mean, I don't know what it is! Do you know why she is so stinky? Is it because she's a black baby?" Wow. Not quite sure how to respond to that, I informed her that I knew of no correlation between race and stinkiness and calmly said we would "keep an eye on it." Hmmm.

In other NICU news this week, I admitted a baby a couple of nights ago born to a 14-year-old girl who showed up in the Emergency Department with abdominal pain and delivered 15 minutes later. Surprise! I don't think I will ever understand how someone can be pregnant for 31 weeks and have NO CLUE that something is going on in there. And by the way, dad is also 14 years old. Both parents are in the 7th grade. Of course, dad doesn't know he's a dad yet, because mom is waiting until her parents get back from vacationing in Texas to tell him the big news. The baby was appropriately named Jesus. :)