GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX) - Saint Mary's Hospital will be holding a special event this Saturday and for one Grand Junction family, this will be like a family reunion. WesternSlopeNow spoke with the family and a nurse about their relationship.
Resident Dulce Davis says, “By the time I was able to see him and wasn't able to hold him and that was that it was hard."
Dulce and Bryan Davis welcomed little Henry Davis in November 2018. But after a Caesarean section, Henry's heart rate started to drop.
“I was terrified because it was my first child,” Dulce explains.
After being directly taken to the Neonatal intensive care unit, little Henry would be in an isolette under a bubble CPAP.
“You know, particularly with your first you think ‘I want to hold my baby immediately’ and to not be able to do that was really hard,” Dulce states.
Then the moment came for Bryan and Dolce that they will never forget.
Dulce states, “I went early in the morning, worked my way down to the NICU from the seventh floor and the nurse said, ‘I have to change his bed. Do you want to hold him?’ And so I got to hold him, finally for the first time and that was amazing. Then that moment when you finally get to hold your baby is like, unlike anything else.”
Dulce would then build a strong relationship with the nursing staff, thanking them for everything they do. She tells WesternSlopeNow the nursing staff at St. Mary’s became a family to her and would find a way to pay it forward.
Kelby Stahl, a registered nurse at St Mary's NICU, states, “You get to know everybody on a different level, and it really changes, like, the depth of relationship that you can have, and parents are just so important to that and the growth that their kids can have and so just getting to see, you know, somebody holding for the first time, or the first time they breastfeed, and getting to be there and be a part of that is unmatched.”
“I always tried to make sure that those types of resources are available to our NICU parents who are spending lots of time in the NICU. That's a big component. Then also being able to be there for those parents who physically can't,” Dolce said.
Little Henry would grow up to be 5 years old along with the stuffed dinosaur and you can say it's his best friend.
“And every year we take a picture as he continues to grow, to show just how much he's grown. When we first purchased this little dinosaur, he was smaller than this T. rex and every year, since we do our family pictures, we always bring our T. rex along to just show how big he's gotten and it's just a good reminder of how much we've overcome,” Dulce states.
This Saturday, Dulce, Henry and Bryan will join other NICU families to have a family reunion at St. Mary's.