MANSFIELD — Aurora Britton pulled the white, waffle knit bow from her head and tossed it on to the floor.
The bow perfectly matched her fuzzy, white-and-lilac checkered jacket. But baby Aurora isn’t that interested in fashion statements.
She’s busy hitting all the typical milestones of a 7-month-old: crawling, babbling and sitting up on her own.
While she’s technically 10 months old, her mother Casey Britton said Aurora is right where she needs to be.
“She was born extremely preterm,” said Britton, who delivered her daughter at 27 weeks’ gestation.
Premature babies are evaluated based on their “adjusted age” — how old they would be if they were born on their due date.
By that metric, Aurora is right on track.
Aurora Britton was born via cesarean section, just two weeks after her mother was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia.
She entered the world weighing 2 pounds, 10 ounces. While Britton recovered from emergency surgery, her baby was immediately rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit at Akron Children’s Hospital.
“She had the ventilator. She was intubated, she was on a CPAP machine. She had blood transfusions,” Britton said. “You name it, she had it.”
The image of her newborn daughter, lying alone in an incubator, was difficult to bear. She was told Aurora had between a 70- to 80-percent chance of survival.
“It was so hard because she was separated from me,” Britton said. “We were faced with, ‘Is she even gonna make it through today? Is she going to make it through tomorrow?”
After she was discharged, Britton spent as much time as possible at the hospital, while her husband Michael juggled work and caring for their three older children. She returned to work five weeks after postpartum, visiting Aurora on her days off.
The distance and driving took a toll.
“As soon as I could, I started working on getting her back here so we could be close to home,” Britton said. “I wanted her closer because she needed us there all the time.”
‘She started thriving’
Two months after she was born, Aurora was transferred to OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital’s Special Care Nursery, which specializes in care for ill or premature babies.
By the time she arrived at the Mansfield hospital, Aurora had already proven she was a fighter.
“She started thriving within days of being here,” Britton said. “Starting to eat more, needing less oxygen, needing less feeding tube. It was just amazing to see.”
For Britton, having her daughter nearby made a world of difference. She’d stop by on her lunch break and after work. The program also allows parents to spend the night in the unit with their babies.
“(The nurses) had to force me (to leave),” she recalled. “They’re like, ‘Go home and sleep in your own bed for a couple hours. She’ll be OK.'”
Meanwhile, the community rallied around the Brittons with meals and donations.
Britton said she would encourage parents dealing with premature or medically fragile babies to give themselves grace and accept help when it’s offered.
“As somebody who’s always used to helping everybody else, it was so difficult to try to accept the help when I needed it. But that’s what the village is for,” she said.
Mansfield program allows premature babies to grow strong close to home
The pediatric hospitalist program is offered through a partnership with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and can serve babies born as early as 32 weeks gestational age.
The program is staffed 24/7 by four full-time and one part-time physician, all board certified in Pediatrics.
Dr. Martin Hanawalt is a pediatric hospitalist and the program’s medical director.
He said the program usually has between three and four babies on the floor at a time. A typical stay for a premature baby is at least three to four weeks.
“(Premature infants) are vulnerable from a respiratory standpoint. The lungs are sometimes not ready for the outside world. They’re not ready to learn to eat. They’re not ready to breathe on their own,” he said. “They’re often low birth weight.”
Hanawalt said feeding can be a physically strenuous activity for a baby, so some preemies are given a feeding tube.
While it’s been in Mansfield for more than a decade, staff said they believe many in the community aren’t aware the pediatric hospitalist program exists.
“Having a child first-hand in a special care nursery here, knowing the high level of care they’re going to receive, I feel like I can confidently say, ‘The providers are great you’re going to have this top level care,'” Britton said.
“People should know this service is available to them.”