NorthBay's NICU Turns 30, Mourns Loss of "Mother of Maternity"
It's hard to imagine a time when Solano County didn't have its bustling Interstate 80, and even harder still to envision how and where critically ill babies were transported to in the years before NorthBay opened its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit back in 1985. In the early '70s, Solano's sickest infants were kept warm with heated water bottles, loaded into an incubator and driven over back roads to a hospital in Woodland, recalled Barbara Lum, a registered nurse and retired director of Maternity Services for what was then Intercommunity Memorial Hospital. "It was difficult," she conceded.
And, in keeping with NorthBay Healthcare's mission to deliver advanced medicine and compassionate care to patients close to their homes, it was about to be changed, Barbara explained. When the NICU opened in 1985, it only had three beds. Today it has 16. It serves about eight babies a day, but can care for many more. On average, as many as 180 infants a year will spend their first days in the NorthBay NICU. Many of the area's most critically ill infants are transported to NorthBay, rather than having to make the difficult trip to San Francisco or Sacramento, far from their families.
Barbara, who joined NorthBay in 1966 and is considered to be NorthBay's "mother of maternity services," was joined by several key managers, staff nurses and a long-time NICU physician recently, as they compared notes over just how much has changed since the NICU was opened 30 years ago. They were joined by a pair of local journalists and photographers.
During the round table discussion, Barbara recalled how she coordinated the earliest parenting courses, and helped establish NorthBay's mission to provide better care for Solano County's critically ill infants, by working to keep them close to home and to their families.
That was a sentiment echoed by Richard Bell, M.D., neonatologist and medical director of the NICU. "It's about the family and the children, and providing a service for the entire community," he told the reporters, while also striving to keep current with best practices.
"What you knew a year ago, might not be the right thing to do now," he said. Katie Lydon, director of Women's and Children's Services, explained how NorthBay recently adopted such best practices as skin-to-skin contact for mother and baby, starting just moments after birth. This critical bonding time is even being extended to when the child undergoes standardized hearing tests and blood draws; as the infant rests in Mom's arms, stress is greatly reduced.
It's also a way to keep the family involved, she added. "The idea is to get that baby healthy and to go home as soon as possible, making memories along the way," she told the reporters.
NorthBay has been ahead of the curve in this respect for many years, noted Heather Troutt, clinical manager for Women's and Children's Services. "We didn't realize how far ahead we are of other facilities." It's all worth it when the children return, as many have for the past 30 years, to the annual NICU reunion.
"When (our former NICU patients) come back with their own babies, you know it was the right thing to do years before," noted Mary Dickey, currently director of Accreditation and Licensure but former director of Women's and Children's Services.
Dr. Bell agreed, as he pulled an envelope out of his shirt pocket and shared it with the group. It was a wedding invitation from one of his NICU patients, whom he cared for some 20+ years earlier. "I see those babies that were so small my wedding ring could fit on their wrist. ... It's all a team effort and the family is part of the team."
Note: Mrs. Lum was so passionate about maternal care at NorthBay that she endorsed creation of a special endowment fund to benefit families of NICU babies. The Robert and Barbara Lum Endowment fund was established when her husband, Robert, passed away in December 2014. Contributions came from friends, employees, and physicians throughout the organization, as well as through a successful March of Dimes "March for Babies" walk in Lagoon Valley Park in April 2015. The fund reached its minimum investment threshold of $10,000 just days before Mrs. Lum's death, and will continue to serve NICU families through perpetuity.
