Welcoming Baby Mavis
Samantha and her husband Justin were enjoying a night out at Canal Days when her cramps began. “I had a great pregnancy up until that point, but I knew those cramps were different,” Samantha remembers. “I was in labour.”
The Fort Erie couple went to the Marotta Family Hospital in St. Catharines and were brought straight to a delivery room. “I was still six weeks away from my due date, so they tried to stop the labour,” Samantha says, but her blood pressure, which had been low throughout her pregnancy, was falling so significantly that they had to stop administering the drugs.
“My water broke at 4 am and within only a few hours, I was almost fully dilated, so she was definitely coming,” Samantha laughs. “I delivered in the Operating Room because it is connected to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and since she was being born so early, we knew she was going to need some sort of assistance.” Just after 4 pm, Samantha got to meet her daughter Mavis, who weighed 5 pounds and 12 ounces. “I think she was the biggest preemie in the NICU.”
The hours that followed her delivery were hard on Samantha and Justin. “He wasn’t sure where to go – I was in recovery, Mavis was in the NICU – but I told him to go be with our daughter.” While baby Mavis did get some skin-to-skin time with Daddy, she also required a lot of testing. “She had to be measured, needed a chest X-ray, had to be put on the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to help her breathing,” Samantha remembers. “Four hours went by before I got to see her again.”
When Samantha did see Mavis, it wasn’t how she had always pictured her first moments with her baby. “She was in a closed incubator, and while I understood that was what she needed, it was still sad seeing her hooked up to 100 tubes in a bubble.”
Still, thanks to the incredible team at Niagara Health, their experience at the NICU was as positive as it possibly could be. “The NICU was an amazing place but a terrifying place at the same time. Their team is so caring. When Mavis was born, we went into the room, and there was a whiteboard. The nurses had written down goals that Mavis had to reach to go home, which was cute. It was goals like ‘get my IV out’ and ‘learn how to drink from a bottle.’” One of the first goals Mavis reached was graduating from the CPAP. “She only needed the machine for two days, and then her lungs were fine, which was surprising.”
Mavis spent three weeks in the NICU, mostly to get strong enough to eat on her own. “The NICU was like a second home for us at that time. Mavis was eating through a tube because drinking from the bottle was too exhausting for her initially. It’s a slow transition where she would have a little bit from the bottle, and then they’d tube-feed the rest.”
Thanks to Niagara Health’s NICU, today Mavis is a happy, inquisitive nine-month-old baby, and we are thankful that Samantha shared her words of gratitude with us and the NICU team.
“I know that healthcare workers often get a lot of negativity, so I wanted to take the time to send in a compliment,” Samantha says. “You have to be a special kind of person to work with children, especially in that situation, because you’re not only dealing with the little patients but also with post-partum mothers and confused parents. They were extremely nice to us and taught us how to be parents. They say babies don’t come with instructions,” Samantha laughs, “well, ours did!”
Their family’s experience was eye-opening for Samantha. “Almost all of the equipment Mavis depended on – the incubator, the cribette, the phototherapy lights, the CPAP machine – is there because of donors.” You never know when life might throw you a curveball, she says. “The way our pregnancy had been going, we didn’t expect to end up NICU parents, but we did. We are so grateful that all of the equipment Mavis needed was there and that we had a caring team who did everything in their power to make our experience less stressful.”
Welcoming Baby Mavis
Samantha and her husband Justin were enjoying a night out at Canal Days when her cramps began. “I had a great pregnancy up until that point, but I knew those cramps were different,” Samantha remembers. “I was in labour.”
The Fort Erie couple went to the Marotta Family Hospital in St. Catharines and were brought straight to a delivery room. “I was still six weeks away from my due date, so they tried to stop the labour,” Samantha says, but her blood pressure, which had been low throughout her pregnancy, was falling so significantly that they had to stop administering the drugs.
“My water broke at 4 am and within only a few hours, I was almost fully dilated, so she was definitely coming,” Samantha laughs. “I delivered in the Operating Room because it is connected to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and since she was being born so early, we knew she was going to need some sort of assistance.” Just after 4 pm, Samantha got to meet her daughter Mavis, who weighed 5 pounds and 12 ounces. “I think she was the biggest preemie in the NICU.”
The hours that followed her delivery were hard on Samantha and Justin. “He wasn’t sure where to go – I was in recovery, Mavis was in the NICU – but I told him to go be with our daughter.” While baby Mavis did get some skin-to-skin time with Daddy, she also required a lot of testing. “She had to be measured, needed a chest X-ray, had to be put on the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to help her breathing,” Samantha remembers. “Four hours went by before I got to see her again.”
When Samantha did see Mavis, it wasn’t how she had always pictured her first moments with her baby. “She was in a closed incubator, and while I understood that was what she needed, it was still sad seeing her hooked up to 100 tubes in a bubble.”
Still, thanks to the incredible team at Niagara Health, their experience at the NICU was as positive as it possibly could be. “The NICU was an amazing place but a terrifying place at the same time. Their team is so caring. When Mavis was born, we went into the room, and there was a whiteboard. The nurses had written down goals that Mavis had to reach to go home, which was cute. It was goals like ‘get my IV out’ and ‘learn how to drink from a bottle.’” One of the first goals Mavis reached was graduating from the CPAP. “She only needed the machine for two days, and then her lungs were fine, which was surprising.”
Mavis spent three weeks in the NICU, mostly to get strong enough to eat on her own. “The NICU was like a second home for us at that time. Mavis was eating through a tube because drinking from the bottle was too exhausting for her initially. It’s a slow transition where she would have a little bit from the bottle, and then they’d tube-feed the rest.”
Thanks to Niagara Health’s NICU, today Mavis is a happy, inquisitive nine-month-old baby, and we are thankful that Samantha shared her words of gratitude with us and the NICU team.
“I know that healthcare workers often get a lot of negativity, so I wanted to take the time to send in a compliment,” Samantha says. “You have to be a special kind of person to work with children, especially in that situation, because you’re not only dealing with the little patients but also with post-partum mothers and confused parents. They were extremely nice to us and taught us how to be parents. They say babies don’t come with instructions,” Samantha laughs, “well, ours did!”
Their family’s experience was eye-opening for Samantha. “Almost all of the equipment Mavis depended on – the incubator, the cribette, the phototherapy lights, the CPAP machine – is there because of donors.” You never know when life might throw you a curveball, she says. “The way our pregnancy had been going, we didn’t expect to end up NICU parents, but we did. We are so grateful that all of the equipment Mavis needed was there and that we had a caring team who did everything in their power to make our experience less stressful.”
