Comanche County Memorial Hospital is celebrating the hospital’s 6th year with its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. To help celebrate, they invited all the kids and their families who were in the unit to a reunion full of fun.
In the last 6 years, they’ve cared for over 1600 babies, and several families came back to the hospital last week to have a reunion with the hospital staff.
Ashley White brought her twin boys to the reunion, who were both born at 32 weeks. They stayed in the NICU for 2 weeks. She says she enjoys getting to come to the reunion and see the nurses and doctors who took care of her and her boys.
“I love getting to see the doctors,” said White. “They remember us, and the kids remember them. And it’s something we’ll go to as long as the kids want to come.”
Mike McCoy is a neonatal nurse practitioner in the NICU. He says the NICU has been very beneficial to patients here in Southwest Oklahoma, so they don’t have to travel to get the care needed.
“That time that they get to bond with the baby, it improves the mothers ability to breastfeed if that’s what she chooses to do,” said McCoy. “It improves the baby’s outcome because the family is right there with them, and has the ability to be with them routinely during their care.”
“I got to stay here in the hospital even though I like in Cache which is still not very far away,” said White. “For two whole weeks, not going back and forth to Cache every single day was amazing just getting to stay here in the hospital.”
McCoy says having this reunion is as much for the staff as it is for the returning families.
“It’s always fun to see them year after year how bigger they are,” said McCoy. “Some of them have teeth and they didn’t have them before. We have a lot of them that are engaging now. They’re almost 6 years old and it’s fabulous to see.”
White says it was very scary when the time came for the twins to be born, but the staff was wonderful and gave her comfort.
“We’re very thankful for them. Like I said, we’ll come as long as my kids want to come,” said White. “Just because we enjoy getting to see them. They’re like family. Not just a job that they did. It was like they’re our family.”
CCMH’s NICU is a level 2 NICU. Which means they care for babies 32 weeks old and above.