Special delivery: Neonatologist helps welcome baby from 50 miles away

In early January, Holly and Ryan Nardinger of Lake City, Minnesota, attended their first labor and delivery class to prepare for the birth of their first child. The lesson came just in time.

That night after getting home, Holly began feeling some unusual sensations. At first, she didn’t think much of it. Her baby wasn’t due to arrive for another two months. She’d had her 32-week checkup earlier that day and says everything looked good.

But the odd, cramping feelings persisted. Holly couldn’t sleep, so she took a warm bath. Then another. And then she experienced something she’d heard about in class the night before.

“Around 3:30 a.m., the contractions started to form one of the patterns we’d learned about,” Holly says. She called the The BirthPlace at Mayo Clinic Health System Red Wing. “They told me to come in and get checked right away.”

At The BirthPlace, staff connected Holly to a machine to monitor her contractions. Then a nurse did an exam to check Holly’s cervix and discovered the baby was ready to arrive. Holly turned to Ryan and said, “Honey, I think we’re having a baby today.”

REMOTE EXPERTISE

That’s when a new member of Holly’s care team entered the room — virtually. Staff explained to Holly that the audio-video machine they’d brought to her bedside would allow William Carey, M.D., a neonatal specialist at Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester, Minnesota, to observe and communicate with them from Rochester via Mayo's Teleneonatology Program. Since the Nardinger’s baby — a girl — was arriving eight weeks early, Dr. Carey would advise staff how to care for the infant until she could be transported to Mayo Clinic for advanced care.

“Dr. Carey was very reassuring,” Holly says. “He explained that a team was already in the air to come and get our baby and bring her to Rochester. He explained what would happen and the possible issues she could have due to being born early.”

With Dr. Carey on the screen, Mayo Clinic's air ambulance helicopter in the air, and a team of nurses and doctors in the delivery room, it was time to welcome Baby Nardinger to the world. “I told the nurses to talk to me like I knew nothing because we’d only had one day of baby classes,” Holly says. The care team offered expert instruction, and three pushes later, Clara Louise was born, weighing 4 pounds, 4 ounces and measuring 16.5 inches long. “She came out screaming and pink,” Holly says of her daughter, the hospital’s first newborn of 2019.

“It seemed like everyone worked as one team instead of two separate teams,” she says.

TO MAYO AND BACK HOME

Holly and Ryan each held their daughter briefly. Then the Mayo air ambulance team transported Clara to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys campus.

“She needed a little help breathing at first,” Holly says. Doctors also placed a feeding tube in Clara’s stomach to ensure she got enough nourishment until she developed the ability to eat on her own. And because she had jaundice — a yellowing of the skin caused by too much bilirubin, a type of pigment in the red blood cells — Clara received light treatment for 48 hours. “It was a little overwhelming to see her all hooked up, but the nurses did a great job reassuring us,” says Holly.

After three days in the Saint Marys NICU, Clara was strong enough to be transferred to a less-acute NICU at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Methodist campus. “We got a lot of patient education from the nurses,” Holly says. “They were really, really helpful and made us feel calm and not overwhelmed.”

On Jan. 26, when Clara was 3 weeks old, Holly and Ryan were finally able to bring her home. The family of three — plus their dog and three cats — are adjusting to their new life together.

“We weren’t completely prepared for the lack of sleep,” Holly says with a laugh. “But I definitely felt more comfortable bringing her home because of all the information we got from the nurses in Rochester.”

Holly says she’s grateful to everyone involved in Clara’s birth — whether they were in the room or 50 miles away.