Ex-NICU Mom Returns, With Gifts

AnneMarie Rivera Berrios pulled up to the front entrance of Yale New Haven’s York Street hospital campus with a trunk full of gift bags, a son on the cusp of turning 3, and still-vivid memories of the kind gestures that helped her through her own time as a NICU mom.

Rivera Berrios – an Annex resident who is also a former Republican candidate for alder and the current chair of the city’s Civilian Review Board – dropped by the children’s hospital entrance at 20 York St. with friend Lisa Milone on Thursday afternoon to deliver 65 white paper bags decorated with roses and ​“Happy Mother’s Day” stickers. They made that drop-off in advance of Mother’s Day on Sunday.

Inside those bags were a mix of small gifts meant to make moms feel just a little bit better as their newborns receive treatment in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Each bag had gum, pens, chips, ChapStick, a $5 Dunkin Donuts gift certificate, a $10 gift certificate to Family Mediterranean Pizza on York Street, and a print-out letter written by Rivera Berrios. 

That letter described her own experience three years ago when her son Joshua spent 121 ​“long hard days” in that very same NICU after being born at just 28 weeks and weighing only 1 pound, 1 ounce. This upcoming June 12, Joshua will turn 3 years old.

“Just so you know, NICU babies are made differently: they are feisty, fighters, strong, brave, and powerful,” Rivera Berrios wrote in gift-bag letter to current NICU moms.

“So today,” she continued, ​“I want you to have a special Mother’s Day bag with some treats to let you know that you are special, loved, and brave, no matter your circumstances.”

She and Milone unpacked each bag and placed them on a metal pushcart wheeled out to the sidewalk by NICU Family Support Specialist Michelle Gray. Rivera Berrios said that every small gesture of kindness — cupcakes, cards, check-ins from friends and family — proved ​“very meaningful” during the months she spent visiting her son every day in the hospital. 

“I still live with all that trauma,” she said. As well as with gratitude for her husband and everyone else who was there for her and Joshua during his time in the hospital. So, last year, she dropped off 30 gift bags for NICU moms at the hospital for Mother’s Day. This year she and Milone increased that gift-bag count to 65.

Rivera Berrios told the Independent that many people donated to make these gift bags possible, including members of the New Haven Republican Town Committee.

Gray has worked in the hospital’s NICU for 11 years. She’s also a NICU mom two times over, with one of her children now about to graduate from college.

“Nobody expects to be a NICU mom,” she said. ​“All of this extra love truly is a gift.”

She said that there are currently 61 babies in the hospital’s 68-bed NICU. That means Rivera Berrios and Milone brought enough bags for every mom in need to receive one this year.

She said the NICU usually has between 58 and 60 babies in its beds at any given time — with the most common reason for a stay being ​“prematurity, babies born early” and/or with medical complications. She said the average length of stay is 17 days.

Gray and Rivera Berrios also remembered just how hard Covid and its associated visitor restrictions made it for parents with kids in the NICU, like Rivera Berrios and Joshua. ​“Those were some long, dark days for families,” she remembered. Gray also said that Thursday marked the first day in over three years that she and her colleagues have been able to go mask-less in non-clinical areas of the hospital like the lobby and cafeteria.

As Gray caught up with Rivera Berrios and heard about Joshua now approaching his third birthday, she recalled some words of wisdom she shares with all NICU moms — and often has to remind herself of, especially now that her children, who were both born premature, are teens moving towards adulthood. 

“The days are long,” she said, ​“the weeks are fast, and the months and years are faster and faster.”