Upgrades at Mercy's Neonatal Unit Allow Families to Focus

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- This month, some of our area's most precious and premature patients will have a new space to take shape.

Mercy Health will soon open Phase I of the new Betty and Bobby Allison Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Look Inside: Mercy's New Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Families like the Skiles know the care that comes from the center. Both twins Mara and Reaghan and their brother spent the first few weeks of their lives there.

"You'd have to leave when the hospital physicians were making their rounds," she recalls. "There were issues with patient confidentiality."

While mom Laura says the NICU's staff was instrumental in her children's recovery, the open space there prevented her from one-on-one time in private with her preemies.

"Just being able to spend time with your children intimately when they need it the most was one of the hardest things."

Now an addition at the NICU, featuring individual rooms, allows families to focus on their babies alone and according to doctors, will reduce the time infants have to spend in the NICU.

"We control the environment," says Clinical educator Caroline Griesemer. "We can control the lighting. We can control the sound."

Griesemer says the customized rooms can directly influence the baby's neurological development.

"A 23-weeker is used to a very quiet uterus where they aren't subjected to loud noises and they aren't subjected to bright lights."

For families like the Skiles, this new space is something they say will help families cope during crisis.

"You can have the privacy to cry if you want to cry and celebrate a new milestone," says Skiles.

And get their babies away from a world of wires sooner.