Queens nurse draws on personal experience while working in NICU

NEW YORK — September is NICU Awareness Month, honoring the families and health care workers in neonatal intensive care.

CBS News New York's Elle McLogan spoke to a special nurse treating premature babies by drawing on her own experience.

"NICU grad, NICU parent, NICU nurse"

On her 12-hour shift at Flushing Hospital, NICU nurse Christine Parasram keeps a close watch over precious patients.

"If we have babies that are ventilated, we're making sure that their oxygens are normal," she said. "We're monitoring them, sometimes by the minute."

It has been her workplace since 2018, but her connection to the facility goes further back. She was born at that same hospital premature, and later, as a mother, came back to deliver her daughter, who weighed just 2 lbs., 2 oz.

"Not only am I a NICU grad, I'm a NICU parent, and now, a NICU nurse," she said.

Inspired by the medical professionals who gave her and her daughter a chance at life, she felt called to go back to school to join the field.

"You see miracles every day"

Now, her work is about caring for more than just newborns.

"It's a big part of our job, too, to provide emotional support for the parents because the NICU is scary, every sound, every light," she said.

For her, empathy comes easily.

"I had to wait a whole week before I was able to hold my baby," she said.

Now, her daughter Emily is 10 years old.

"To watch her struggle and to be who she is now – the strong, independent, fierce girl that she is – is truly amazing," she said.

Nursing director Maria D. Smilios says their unit admits up to 50 babies each month.

"We have babies starting from 23 weeks of gestation up until full term, whether it's prematurity or perhaps even problems with the transition to newborn life," she said.

She says nurses serve as an extension of parents' love and attention, with perhaps no one more qualified than Parasram.

"There's joy. There's sadness. There's everything," Parasram said. "In the NICU, you see miracles every day."

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