The Valley Hospital is now open at 4 Valley Health Plaza in Paramus. (You may need to use 650 Winters Avenue for GPS.) All emergency care is now being provided at this location. Emergency care is no longer available at our Ridgewood campus.
Visitor restrictions are in place at Valley's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Please see our Visiting Hours page for the latest guidelines.
Most babies are born without complications, but sometimes a baby has difficulty making the complex transition to life outside the womb. A premature or difficult delivery, a pregnancy with multiple babies, or the presence of a birth defect may require that a newborn be admitted to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for special newborn care.
Valley’s NICU, a Level III nursery, provides newborns with the specialized care needed to get them off to the best possible start in life.
Babies in the NICU are usually the tiniest of newborns, often born prematurely. In addition to being fragile, they require specialized medical and nursing care.
Valley’s 15-bed NICU is designated by the State of New Jersey as a Level III nursery, a designation given to neonatal units able to provide the highest level of care for high-risk mothers and acutely ill newborns.
All medical care is delivered in a manner designed to support the parents as well as the baby and to optimize family-centered care. For example, mothers are taught and encouraged to provide “kangaroo care” or skin-to-skin contact with premature infants. And breastfeeding is encouraged and supported whenever possible.
Valley’s NICU is staffed by board-certified neonatologists, who are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The neonatology team also includes highly skilled neonatal nurses, lactation consultants and a wide variety of other healthcare professionals who care for babies and their parents.
Every child admitted to the NICU is evaluated to determine if follow-up care will be needed at the Kireker Center for Child Development.
Being apart from your infant while he or she is cared for in the NICU can be challenging. To make the separation a bit easier, parents and extended family members have secure access to NicView™, Valley’s NICU camera system, which allows them to have “virtual visits” with their little ones via a webcam.
NicView cameras are placed at designated bed spaces in the NICU and allow family and friends to view their infant in real-time through a secure online portal. NicView adds peace of mind, provides reassurance, and helps strengthen the bond between parents and their preemies or hospitalized infants when parents can’t be at the bedside.
The camera delivers a secure image stream for parents and family members to view their babies remotely. (NicView produces a streaming image that travels securely with up to 256-bit SSL encryption, the current web standard.) Cameras do not transmit sound and do not record video. NicView can be accessed from anywhere an internet connection is available via a laptop, smartphone or tablet. The service is compatible with any internet-capable device and most popular browsers.
Parents need to sign a consent form to use the NicView™ Streaming Camera System before being given unique login credentials. No other users will have access to NicView unless they’re given the login credentials by the baby’s parents.