FOCUS: HEALTH CARE
Women & Children’s cares for Ontario ‘miracle baby’
Shortage at hospital where Ava was born necessitated journey
One-week-old Ava Isabella Stinson — all 2 pounds of her — has made quite a dramatic entrance into the world.
First her birth. Last Thursday, her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, rushed to a Hamilton, Ont., hospital, where she was born 20 minutes later — more than three months before her due date.
She weighed 2 pounds 4 ounces at birth.
Then came another complication that doctors couldn’t treat — there was no room at the inn for Ava in the Hamilton area.
Lack of any empty beds in a neonatal unit in Hamilton’s McMaster Children’s Hospital forced authorities to prepare to take Ava across the border to Women & Children’s Hospital in Buffalo.
But an intense storm that afternoon grounded the helicopter, so the McMaster neonatal transport team brought her here by ambulance.
Ava is not the first baby from Southern Ontario to be cared for in Women & Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
That unit treats 10 to 15 babies from Canada each year, according to Dr. Rita M. Ryan, Women & Children’s chief of neonatology.
“It happens all the time,” Ryan said. “They have a certain number of NICU beds [in Southern Ontario], and sometimes they run out.”
Last year, Women & Children’s treated 14 such premature babies. In most of those cases, the mothers are transported here before giving birth. There wasn’t enough time, though, in Ava’s case.
McMaster Children’s officials concede they have an ongoing problem.
“It’s an issue we’re well aware of,” said Roxanne Kantzavelos, a McMaster spokeswoman. “We know this is tough on families, so we’re working hard to remedy the bed issue.”
Kantzavelos cited the current efforts of the hospital’s president to push the Ontario Ministry of Health for five more beds to add to the facility’s 47- bed neonatal unit.
When there are no beds available at McMaster, hospital officials look for other neonatal beds in Ontario. If none can be found, they look to the United States.
While Ava’s story reveals an occasional shortage of neonatal beds in Canada, it also raised another question: Did tougher restrictions at the U. S.-Canada border since June 1 play any role in her parents having to wait three days to visit her?
U. S. border officials insist the answer is no.
After Ava was brought to Buffalo, her parents thought that their lack of passports, combined with Paquette’s recovery from caesarean surgery, prevented them from following her across the border.
So Stinson and Paquette monitored Ava’s condition by phone for three days.
U. S. Customs officials told them on Sunday that they were free to travel to Buffalo, which they did. The couple then returned to Hamilton on Monday to deal with an infection in Paquette’s incision.
Authorities say Paquette and Stinson never were denied entry to the United States, despite his criminal past from more than 15 years ago. They didn’t try to cross the border until Sunday, when U. S. Customs told them that Stinson would be eligible for what’s called “humanitarian parole.”
“We have the ability to grant humanitarian parole to a person who otherwise would be inadmissible,” explained Kevin A. Corsaro, a chief at the local U. S. Customs and Border Protection office. “Under normal circumstances, we would not separate parents from a sick child.”
During the “informed compliance” period that began June 1, Canadian citizens are not being denied entry to the United States just because they lack the proper documents, Corsaro also pointed out.
Ava’s story, with all its cross-border twists and turns, also remains a human one.
Stinson said he has found only one way to explain the whirlwind of events in the last week.
“I was an atheist,” he said in a lengthy phone interview from his Hamilton home. “Now I’m considering going to church and being a believer. There’s got to be someone up there who’s saving our little daughter.”
On Tuesday morning, Stinson got up and prayed for little Ava. That day, he and Paquette learned their baby had been taken off the ventilator the day before.
“That’s enough for me to be a believer,” he said.
Ava’s weight has dropped to 1 pound 15 ounces, as of Wednesday, not uncommon for premature babies. She still has a brain bleed, but two other medical problems have cleared up; a blood vessel that had stayed open after birth has closed, and she’s no longer in respiratory distress.
“I think her prognosis is very good,” Ryan said. “She’s already off the ventilator, and she’s started on a small amount of feeding, which is good.”
Ava now gets x of a teaspoon of formula at a time.
“But she still has a long way to go,” Ryan added. “There will be good days and bad days.”
Stinson said he has been filled with emotion every time he has seen his little daughtero.
“She’s the smallest baby in the world,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
And he’ll never forget the first time he saw Ava.
“The first thing I did was cry. Then I cupped her head in my right hand. Her head was way too small for my hand. I was talking, and she reached up and touched my finger.”
Stinson remains impressed by the reception his family has received in Buffalo, especially at Women & Children’s and at Ronald McDonald House on West Ferry Street.
“I didn’t want her to go [to Buffalo],” he said of Ava’s having to cross the border. “I still don’t like it. But I like where she is. That hospital is amazing. Every nurse, every doctor cares. Even the security guards care about how you feel.”
On their quick trip to Buffalo, Paquette and Stinson stayed at Ronald McDonald House.
“It’s like living in a mansion,” he said. “There’s a workout room, showers, a computer room, garden, all the food you can eat and shuttle service to and from the hospital. They took excellent care of us.”
Paquette returned to Buffalo for part of Wednesday. She and Stinson are expected back in Buffalo late today. While he plans to stay until Monday, Paquette expects to stay longer. Ava is expected to be hospitalized for about three months, although some of that could be in Canada.
The whole experience has changed Stinson, and not only in a religious way. He also has a different view of Americans.
“The American people have been so awesome, I’d like to go back there and vacation,” he said.
And that could include showing his young daughter both the hospital where she was taken and Ronald McDonald House.
The family’s story has been all over Google and YouTube the last few days, so Stinson knows what he’ll tell Ava some day.
“I’m just going to tell her she’s a celebrity — and a miracle baby.”
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