Winchester Hospital Reunites with Special Care Nursery Patients

landscape was dotted with color, carriages and young life as doctors, nurses and staff hosted the children and the parents of children treated in the Special Care Nursery (SCN) facility on a Sunday afternoon.

Resident Beth Mack, her three-year-old daughter, Annalise, and the girl's grandmother Terry Mack sat at one of the tables speaking with other mothers and snacking on the refreshments provided.

"My daughter was born here," said Mack. "The SCN staff wasn't able to aspirate her as it normally goes with newborns. She was stabilized here and sent by ambulance to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston to be placed on their special equipment."

"She spent 10 days at Brigham," Mack explained. "She returned to Winchester for another three weeks before coming home. She was followed by specialists for her first year. She's been fine ever since," she said smiling at Annalise who ate and played with her animal crakers.

This story and others like it have played themselves out for over 7,000 babies in the last 23 years since the hospital's SCN unit first opened thier level IIB neonatal facility.

According to its director, Karen McAlmon, M.D., approximately 80 percent of the babies treated are born at Winchester Hospital while the remainder are sent from Boston hospitals.

"It works out well for the premature babies, babies needing special care and their parents," said Mc Almon who has been with the program for over 16 years.

"The potential of children is always amazing.They came into the world with serious life-threatening and debilitating conditions and now they are toddling around, taking it all in with faces full of expression, recognizing their parents and doing all the things children were born to do," McAlmon beamed.

"We have partnerships with Boston hospitals allowing us a level of service and flexibility suited to providing state-of-the-art care for every infant regardless of their gestational age," McAlmon explained.

Associate Director Kimberlee Chatson. M.D. said treating the SCN babies is an especially rewarding part of medical practice.

"This reunion highlights all of the possibilities," stated Chatson as she held one of her former patients. "This field applies technology to small babies and you see how they are able to get better. They thrive. It's so exciting!"

Mom Yaneris and husband Joseph Dolce, a military family stationed at Hanscom Air Force base in Bedford came with 14-month daughter Adrianna.

"She was born five weeks early," Yaneris recalled. "She weighed 4 pounds. She had a milk allergy and needed to learn how to suck. She lost weight in her first 14 days."

"The hospital was able to send her to Children's Hospital for four days where they helped her gain weight and advised certain preventative measures," she said.

 "I got wonderrful care from this staff. The labor delivery nurse taught me how to care for my daughter with confidence and set up a feeding schedule for me to follow at home. I've been so grateful," Yaneris emphasized.

Those in attendence were diverse and each had a story. A former baby of the SCN and the oldest of the program talked with the staff standing at 6 feet tall.

Twins sisters Farren and Celia Moser of Reading were born weighing 2 pounds 12 ounces and 4 pounds 2 ounces. Each weigh approximately 16 pounds now, and sleep side by side in separate cribs looking at each other before falling asleep each night.