How your donation makes a difference for NICU babies at children’s hospital

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - November is Prematurity Awareness Month, and your of the Children’s Hospital of Georgia has helped thousands of babies who come through the doors of the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.

We met up with one family whose baby was born at one pound.

“This hospital and God saved my baby,” said Leanna Moss.

She went into labor 15 weeks early in June at a hospital in Athens.

“My pregnancy was perfect. Every scan I had, and every ultrasound was good. It all happened within a day, within 24 hours,” she said.

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Today, Brooks is nine pounds, but flashback to June when he was born, he weighed one pound and ten ounces.

Moss says when she saw her baby for the first time, it was a new kind of love.

“I knew what we were up against. It was going to be a rough road. He was so tiny. He could fit in my hand, but he’s made it. He’s a little trooper,” said Moss.

Six days later, Brooks’ stomach became discolored. He had a spontaneous intestinal perforation which is when a hole occurs in a baby’s intestine.

Brooks was transported seven days later to CHOG. When he arrived, he had to have emergency surgery.

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Thankfully, this is the only surgery he would need.

“Your outlook on things are different. Small things you use to think don’t matter, especially when your baby is fighting for his life,” she said.

Brooks has been in the NICU since June.

There are 45 beds there and hundreds of items have been purchased through donations.

Like the weighted Zaky hand, Boppy pillows, swings, and even an ECMO machine that pumps blood outside of a body to remove carbon dioxide.

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Tonya Hebert is a neonatal ECMO transport specialist and ed nurse.

She said, “It’s a very important job that we do here, and we enjoy the community helping us be able to purchase some of that equipment for our most fragile babies, just to help them grow.”

Hebert says it was such a great feeling to watch Brooks grow.

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“It’s awesome to have watched him be in isolette as a tiny tot, to now be in an open crib and be able to be held daily by his parents, and he’s so big now,” she said.

For Moss, she says having a baby early isn’t easy, but there’s always hope.

“It is a true roller coaster, but it gets better, and there is light at the end of the tunnel, and these babies are fighters,” she said.

She says Brooks is doing great, and they should be able to leave the hospital once he is off respiratory .

If you want to continue helping make miracles happen at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia and helping babies like Brooks, visit Augusta University Health.