Emotional reunion between Regina NICU patients and hospital staff

Parents whose children have spent time at Regina General Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) got another chance to say thank you at a reunion on Sunday between hospital staff and the families they helped saved.

The NICU is a unit at Regina General consisting of health professionals who specialize in the care of premature newborns or sick babies.

Sunday’s reunion was an emotional one for both the parents and their children as they reconnected with nurses and doctors from the NICU.

“You need something positive to remind you that it is an amazing thing to do,” NICU manager Tom Sorenson said.

“It’s great to see what we’ve done.”

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For NICU nurse Alexandra Gross, reuniting with one-year-old Logan Costley and his twin brother Jesse was overwhelming.

The Costley twins were in NICU for over 100 days.

READ MORE: Inside a NICU: a ‘tough world people are totally unaware of’

“We got to spend quite a bit of time with them,” Gross said.

Logan and Jesse are healthy now but that wasn’t always the case. In April 2015, the twins had cord complications that prompted an emergency c-section.

They were only six-and-a-half months old when they were born.

“They had some respiratory distress and they each took turns getting sick,” Gross remembered.

“One would get a little bit better and come off some of their ventilator and off their respiratory support, and then the other would seem to get sick again,” she said.

Their mother Michelle Costley said it was frightening at first.

“When you didn’t know what to expect, that’s when I was scared,” Costley said.

NICU nurses and doctors got the opportunity to reconnect with their patients, sharing similar stories of survival and friendship.

READ MORE: ‘It’s where the most miracles happen’: a story of hope in the NICU

Another mother, Bridget Ready explained what it meant to see the nurses who helped deliver her child.

“We’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. You strike up friendships with the nurses,” she said.

Both health professionals and their families grateful for the other.

“We’re lucky that they’re willing to let us into their family and let us get to know them and that they trust us with their kids,” Gross said.

“They kind of treat us like family.”