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Alex Garnat, BSN, RN, stepped onto the truck and into the emergency at hand to care for his community of Albuquerque, New Mexico for more than 25 years as a paramedic. He fulfilled his purpose of caring for people in all situations, but his desire to bring his clinical expertise into the hospital setting continued to grow. With the encouragement of his wife, a registered nurse, Alex pursued his path to becoming a nurse.

Should I let my baby “cry it out?”

This is never an easy topic. SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is when an infant one year or younger dies an unexplained death during sleep. There is nobody to blame for this type of death, but there are safe sleep guidelines that do reduce the risk of SIDS. Newborns can sleep up to 16 hours a day, so they spend much of their time sleeping. They sleep in three to four hour increments and need to eat often, but added all together, they sleep most of the day. It is important to keep the sleeping area for your baby as safe as possible.

The journey of breastfeeding looks different for every family. Certain circumstances require moms to pump more often, or place of, skin-to-skin feedings. If you find yourself in this boat, we share words of wisdom from your collaborative fellow pumpers:

From Jadie:

Aren’t health and wellness the same thing? Actually, no. Health and wellness are not the same, but they do complement one another. It is similar to how your body and mind are linked. How you treat your body affects your mental health and how you think affects what happens to your body. Health, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Loving yourself is vital; whether you are in a relationship, wishing you were, or satisfied with simply you. Are there risks with loving others? Absolutely.  If you first, love yourself, your current and future relationships will be able to thrive that much more. It sounds easy enough, but unfortunately, many of us tend to fall short of loving ourselves. We are inclined to be more critical of ourselves than anyone else is. Sometimes we give everything to others, help others and put ourselves last. We are social beings, so it is natural to be nurturing, caring and loving to others.

A human milk bank, or breast milk bank, is a service that collects, screens, processes and dispenses, by prescription, human milk donated by nursing mothers not related to the receiving infant. The best nutrition for newborn infants is from breastfeeding, when possible, for the first year. Human milk banks offer a solution to mothers who aren’t able to supply their own breast milk. The largest group using donor milk is premature babies.

Heidi Niclas, RN, a mother-baby nurse in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was drawn to healthcare at a young age. Inspired by her grandmother, who was an emergency room nurse, Heidi dreamed of following in her footsteps to make a difference in the lives of others. In 2007, this dream was fulfilled, not only launching Heidi’s nursing career at Lovelace Women’s Hospital, but also putting her on a path to provide compassionate patient care more than 10,000 miles away from home.

A Mission of Mercy Sets Sail  

Sexual Transmitted Infections (STIs) are on the rise for the fifth straight year and quite preventable. A STI, formerly known as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) is an infection passed from one person to another through sexual contact like vaginal, oral or anal sex. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows an alarming rise in cases of syphilis, the highest since 1991. There is no room for stigma or shame when a person understands the consequences of not being treated.

Every day, new information surfaces on the spread of the coronavirus. And while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that children may be at a lower risk for COVID-19, a new pediatric health condition associated with the coronavirus has begun to make an appearance.

Introducing Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C)