As Benefis NICU turns 50, parents and nurses share their stories
In Elk’s Riverside Park, lots of kids running around and climbing on the playground equipment is not an unusual sight. It’s the perfect spot for family reunions.
On Saturday, June 25, a whole different kind of family got together there to celebrate a milestone.
This year, the Benefis Health System Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) turned 50, and Saturday’s party was a testament to the number of people whose families are a little bigger thanks to the doctors and nurses who work there.
Forty years and one day
For 40 of the 50 years, the NICU has been open, Marlene Lund was on its staff. She retired eight years ago but still remembers many of the babies she cared for.
Lund was originally hired for pediatrics and was asked if she wanted to work nights in the Intensive Care Nursery, as it was called then. She said she didn’t know at first what she was getting into, but it became a labor of love.
Lund was also one of the first NICU flight nurses. The team picks up mothers and babies to take them to the hospital in emergencies.
Lund calls the NICU a family, and NICU mom Paige Stewart agrees.
Stewart’s son Mason was in the NICU because she had a placental abruption and her blood mixed with her baby’s. Mason also had his umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck. Stewart said the experience was terrifying, but the nurses were a huge help.
“It was almost like my baby had other moms looking after him there,” she said. “They mothered him when I wasn’t able to be there because I had another child.”
“They do it with love and passion, and not just because it’s their job,” said preemie mom Robyn Brantner. “They do it because they love it.”
Lund agreed, saying most people don’t sign up to be a nurse because they don’t know what else to do. They do it because they care. She said many wanted to be nurses from the time they were little.
“It’s who we are, it’s not what we do. It’s a calling,” she said.
Over the years, Lund has been able to see the advancement in the field of neonatology.
When she started, the flight crew used to bring babies in “on a prayer and a promise,” doing the best they could with the resources they had. At that time, a baby at three pounds and 30 weeks had next to no chance of survival.
By 2010, babies at 25 weeks had about a 10-25% chance of surviving intact. Now, that number is up to 25-30%.
“By the time babies are at 30 weeks, those same babies that were so sick 40 years ago, those babies have survival rates that are very nearly what a term baby would have…That’s how far we’ve come,” Lund said.
One woman’s story
On the week of Thanksgiving in 2020, Brantner was at 21 weeks when her water broke. The doctors said she was fine and sent her home, but she started having contractions.
When she started bleeding, the docs said she was overdoing it as a single mom working two jobs. But the bleeding and contractions got worse. A friend who was a nurse told her to get herself to the hospital. When they checked her in, doctors said she wasn’t leaving until she delivered.
On December 16, at 24 weeks, baby Oaqlynn tried to come out back-first, and doctors told Brantner she had two minutes to text her family. All she could send out was “911.”
When doctors opened her up for a C-section, Oaqlynn did the splits. She had one leg in the birth canal and the other coming out of the incision. She ended up being a rare “natural birth by C-section,” Brantner said.
When Oaqlynn was born, she weighed one pound, 11 ounces. By the next day, her weight had gone under one pound. She was fairly healthy for the first month, not even needing a ventilator.
Then both her lungs collapsed, and her bowel began to die.
“I remember waking up to the sirens of all the machines going off and a swarm of nurses and doctors,” Brantner said. “I woke up in a panic, and (the nurse) pretty much told me that I needed to go home and prepare my family because the chances of her coming out of it weren’t very good.”
Brantner said she kicked and screamed and prayed to God. She was curled up in a ball the following day when the doctor called.
“I could barely talk...I could barely breathe,” she said. “He kept telling me I needed to calm down. He didn’t know what I said or what I did, but she was off the breathing machines…she did a complete 180 in a matter of four hours.”
Oaqlynn spent 119 days in the NICU.
Brantner said Oaqlynn immediately developed a hankering for attention, pulling out tubes and wires or holding her breath to setting off breathing machines and bring the nurses running.
“She definitely left her mark,” Brantner said, laughing.
Oaqlynn went home on April 14, 2021, at a little over five pounds. At 18 months, she still weighs just 15 pounds.
Brantner said if she’d been anywhere else, Oaqlynn wouldn’t have survived.
“If it wasn’t for the NICU, I wouldn’t have my daughter. They’re angels,” she said. “They are the reason she walks and talks and is breathing. They are the reason all these kids are here.”
Parents helping parents
Alexa O’Dell is one of the founders of the Family Advisory Council (FAC), an organization that provides an extra layer of support and education to NICU families. Every member has had a NICU baby.
O’Dell said FAC members recall their time in the NICU and try to think of ways to make that time better for others. She said parents are in an unfamiliar environment, don’t know the language and are scared for their babies. Just connecting with another person who has been through the same experience is a big deal.
“It’s just the people who have a strong desire to give back and keep a connection with that NICU family because they do mean so much to you,” O’Dell said.
Sarah Eberl has been part of FAC since 2019. She said when she had two of her children in the NICU, she felt she had no one to relate to. Giving back through FAC also gives her a chance to process the post-traumatic stress disorder from her own deliveries.
“You feel very disconnected from everyone — your friends, your family. If they haven’t been through it, they don’t understand and they don’t know what to say. And it’s not their fault. They just don’t know. But you need someone to connect to who understands.”
FAC makes NICU time special by handing out cards with the baby’s footprints and gifts such as teddy bears. When babies leave the NICU, they get a graduation diploma and a NICU grad onesie.
Anyone who’d like to help FAC can call the Benefis NICU to be connected with the group.
It’s about remembering
As she talked about her time as a NICU nurse, Lund recalled going to a funeral for one baby she had cared for. She said when the baby’s father passed her in her pew, he said, “You’re family, come with me.”
She still tears up telling the story many years later. The baby’s name was Cole — the same name as her grandson, who was also a NICU baby.
Lund said being able to see all the healthy, happy children is what made the reunion meaningful.
“Even the babies that we remember that aren’t here, we learned something from them, and hopefully we helped those parents through a tough time,” she said. “And hopefully it comforts them to know that we didn’t forget…that’s what it’s all about is remembering.”
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This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Benefis NICU turns 50, parents and nurses celebrate with a reunion
