BOZEMAN — Eight babies have been born as of Jan. 4 at the Bozeman Health Deaconess hospital, including the firstborn baby of 2022, baby Emerson.
“It was a long journey for us, so we’re very excited to finally be parents,” said Emerson's mom, Audrey Hood.
Mom is right it has been quite a journey for the first-time parents.
“I have endometriosis, so I dealt with a lot of pain for many years, which ultimately led to infertility," said Hood. "We tried for three years to get pregnant including two failed fertility treatments and then nine months later we found out we were pregnant, which of course was an amazing day after that long journey.”
But the complications led to the couple spending the holidays in the hospital.
“We moved in here on December 17th, and have been here since then so we spent Christmas and New Year's Eve in the hospital, which is a little overwhelming to think about, but the nurses made us so comfortable,” said Hood.
The hospital’s new state-of-the-art neonatal intensive care unit was finished in 2020, and if it had not been for the expansion, the baby would have had to be flown to the nearest NICU somewhere else.
“I couldn’t imagine it as soon as he’s born, he’s put on a plane and flown to Billings, and here we are everything that we’ve struggled through, and our son’s just in the air going somewhere else, so for him to stay here it was amazing,” said Emerson's dad, Daniel Sanders.
While the couple was facing serious complications, the nurses and staff at the hospital did their best to keep everyone’s spirits high.
“We like to guess which baby is going to be the New Years' baby and we’re never right," said Katy Osterloth of Bozeman Health Deaconess. "Why we keep guessing, I don’t know. But it’s always a fun event when we have our first baby of the year.”
Emerson and his parents are all happy and healthy.
