Onslow Memorial Special Care nursery reopens

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — Families in Onslow County with sick children now have one less thing to stress about.

Onslow Memorial Hospital is reopening its special care nursery for infants that may need to stay in the hospital longer. Babies being treated at the hospital can now get all the care they need under one roof, instead of being sent to a different hospital once they were taken out of the NICU or if they didn’t have a serious illness.

A special care nursery is different from a typical NICU, as it is where babies go if they get better but still aren’t ready to go home, or do couplet therapy with mom. Couplet therapy is when a mother and her infant get treated together in the mother’s room.

The nursery is also where they can get treated for things like jaundice, low blood sugar and low birth weight. Onslow Memorial Hospital’s Neonatologist retired last year, which is the doctor that’s required to run the nursery. Now, they have nurse practitioners and a telehealth doctor, so they can keep babies closer to home.

It’s made life a lot easier for parents like Katie Andrew, who had to travel from Beaufort to Wilmington to see her newborn.

“So, we then were able to move to Jacksonville because her main issue was really she was tiny and just needed to put weight on,” Andrew said. “So she didn’t need to be at the high intensity as Wilmington is. So, we were luckily able to move and we were only there for about two weeks, maybe three weeks and then she got to come home.”

Onslow Memorial is looking to add more beds to the nursery in the future.

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