Advanced NICU Care, Close to Home

Before her son Graham was born, Brittany assumed a baby in crisis would mean leaving everything behind: her husband, her two daughters, her home. All to chase the level of care she needed somewhere far away.

What she found at St. Elizabeth Healthcare stopped her in her tracks. It was the kind of advanced obstetrics and neonatal care you expect from large academic medical centers. Nationally recognized specialists, a Level III NICU and compassionate support at every turn. All of it, right in her backyard.

An Unsettling Hunch

During a weekend trip to Florida for a wedding, Brittany had a flash of mother’s intuition. She was 24 weeks pregnant with her third child, and she knew something was amiss.

“I started to have fluids that weren’t necessarily normal, and I knew something was wrong,” she says, remembering the sinking feeling that this pregnancy wouldn’t go as planned. “I had an appointment scheduled that following Monday or Tuesday. When I went in, I just kind of said, ‘Something’s not exactly right.’”

A quick ultrasound scan with her OB-GYN at St. Elizabeth showed that Brittany’s gut feeling was spot on. Her amniotic fluid, the liquid that cushions and protects the baby as it grows, was mostly gone. Her doctor sent her directly to
St. Elizabeth Healthcare Family Birth Place.

An Unexpected, Early Arrival

Babies born at 24 weeks have a roughly 10% chance of survival. So, Brittany’s doctors tried everything they could to delay delivery. She went into labor anyway, and her son Graham arrived, weighing 1 lb., 9.9 oz.

“They had to rush him off, but the doctor was kind enough to lay him on my stomach for a minute,” she says, remembering her son’s first moments. “He was the smallest thing, and he looked like a gummy bear.”

Graham was tiny. His lungs were underdeveloped, and he faced countless health hurdles. Brittany was scared. The kind of scared that makes you start thinking about transfers, about distance, about whether the right care exists anywhere near home. But she quickly learned the Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Elizabeth has the innovative tools and clinical expertise to care for the smallest, most fragile newborns. And the hospital’s proximity to her home, husband and two older daughters gave Brittany a double sigh of relief.

“Before everything happened and he was delivered, I did think that there would be a possibility that we would have to transfer out,” she says. “I didn’t know that there was that level of NICU literally in my backyard.”

A Team Ready for Whatever Came Next

Brittany’s care team was ready to support her from the moment she arrived, says, Jacqueline Carpenter, DO, uan OB-GYN at St. Elizabeth, who delivered Graham.

“We initiated multi-level care to address Brittany and Graham’s needs,” she says. “When there is the potential of an early delivery and especially that early, we want to make sure that we have all teams available.”

Together, Brittany’s team of OB-GYNs, nurses and neonatologists delivered the type of seamless, comprehensive care you find in big-city hospitals. For example, before Graham’s birth, they administered medications to prevent any infections and to protect his brain from neurological problems. And after Graham was born, they fitted him with a small Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine, a non-invasive support tool that helps premature babies breathe.

Each day, from her delivery through Graham’s NICU stay, presented a new health obstacle. But Brittany says her providers at St. Elizabeth were always ready.

“The toughest challenge of that journey is the unknown. You can hope, but you genuinely don’t know how your child’s body is going to react — how your child in general is going to react,” Brittany says. “The level of care he got there… they were always prepared for the next step of what it was going to be, whether it was good, whether it was bad.”

The St. Elizabeth Level III NICU is equipped to provide the most advanced neonatal care available outside of a major academic medical center. That includes mechanical ventilation, sophisticated cardiac monitoring, specialized IV nutrition, blood transfusions and around-the-clock care from a dedicated team of neonatologists and neonatal nurses. Families can also connect with their babies remotely through NicView™ cameras, a live video system that lets parents see their newborn any time of day or night

Compassionate Support at Every Turn

The doctors and nurses at St. Elizabeth provided expert care that gave Brittany the confidence that her baby would thrive and grow into a healthy little boy. But it was their gentle support and kindness that made the NICU feel like home while Graham needed special services.

“There’s not enough ‘thank yous’ in the entire world. I’ve never had more people check on me. More people, when you’re just literally having an emotional breakdown, just reach out for a hug or just sit down and listen because you do feel slightly isolated,” Brittany says, noting that her nurses always explained what was going on in realistic, compassionate ways. “To have somebody who knows what you are experiencing just sit down with you and let you vent, let you cry, and then give you a hug and let you know they’re going to be here with you every step of the way. That’s something very special within that NICU.”

That kind of human connection—the hug in the hallway, the nurse who sits down when you need to fall apart—is something Brittany says she never expected to find so close to home. It turned a frightening experience into something she could survive.

For families with premature babies, knowing you don’t have to cross the river to get high-quality care for your newborn can be a game-changer.

“We have a Level III NICU here at St. Elizabeth, which is extremely important to be able to care for patients like Brittany. Having that level of care is necessary in order to admit her in the hospital because we want to ensure we have all of the resources available to take care of her early baby,” Dr. Carpenter says. “This adds not only a heightened level of care for all of our patients, but also a convenience after delivery that families can be closer to their babies.”

A Happy Outcome

Today, Brittany’s visions of Graham in the NICU feel like a distant, but vivid, memory.

“Throughout the journey, the [doctors and nurses] were all amazing. Someone had once said, ‘when you look back in a few years after you’ve made it through all of this, it’ll be a blip in his story,’” she says. “And, as long as that journey seemed, now looking at him, it’s a little smile and things like that. It was definitely just a blip in his story.”

She credits the NICU team for the gentle, expert care that gave her son a strong start in life.

“The team at St. Elizabeth made so many things possible for Graham. There were a lot of odds stacked against him,” Brittany says. “Now he runs, and he giggles and is talking. Just literally Graham being here right now is a testament to what they do.”

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