Tiffany Avison was born at Holland Hospital and gave birth to her daughter Charley, now 2 ½, at Holland Hospital. So it was fitting that she and her husband Curtis had their hearts set on Holland Hospital for the birth last year of their second baby. And their third.
And…their fourth..
They got their wish on Dec. 30, 2011, when Tiffany gave birth to two girls and a boy at the Boven Birth Center. They were Holland Hospital’s first triplets in 50 years.
“Having them at Holland Hospital was a major factor for us,” says Curtis, 31. “We are extremely happy. The care we received here was not something we would have gotten anywhere else.”
The hospital’s pediatricians and nursery staff had mapped out every detail of the births in advance, including checklists, call schedules and color-coded infant hats and supplies. “We called it the triple play,” says Joyce VanHoff, RN, clinical coordinator for the Boven Birth Center.
The birth center’s Special Care Nursery is equipped with state-of-the-art neonatal equipment for newborns who need a higher level of support, including preterm deliveries as early as 32 weeks. Pediatric hospitalists and nurse practitioners are available 24/7 to provide specialized care for the babies. Although about 20 sets of twins are counted among the 1,800 babies born at Holland Hospital each year, triplets are rare because they have a greater chance of very early preterm birth.
The Avisons had toured larger hospitals but chose the Boven Birth Center for the “personal touch that we got here,” says Tiffany, 27. She was given the go-ahead to deliver at Holland Hospital if she carried the triplets for at least 33 weeks. She went into labor at 33 weeks and 4 days. “We had a countdown going,” she admits.
Jaxton, Hadley and Berkley each entered the world with a healthy cry and weighed in at just over 4 pounds. For the next few weeks the newborns were closely monitored in the Special Care Nursery “to ensure that they learned to feed normally and began to gain weight,” explains David Chamness, MD, Medical Director of Holland Hospital’s Pediatric Hospitalist Program. All three were home with their family within 16 days of their birth.