Babies inspire mother’s workmates to raise money for neonatal unit
Last Tuesday was one year since Miles and Lincoln Jury were born but only nine months since their actual due date.
The fraternal twins arrived 28 weeks and four days early, leaving mum Nicolette Jury more than a bit surprised.
“Their corrected age is just over nine months old if they were born at their due date, but obviously they just turned one,” she said.
“Developmentally they are between nine and a 12 months old. They’re doing some 12 month old stuff, but other stuff they’re not quite doing yet. Otherwise they’re typical one-year-olds.”
Jury hadn’t had any issues with her pregnancy and wasn’t expecting them to come early, she said.
“It was spontaneous labour. We went to the hospital to get checked out and thought nothing of it. Then it seemed to progress as the night went on and they were born the next morning.”
Jury wasn’t too worried, she said. “You trust the doctors. They know what they are doing.”
Miles weighed in at 13.63 grams and Lincoln at 12.19 grams.
While the boys were in the neonatal unit for 10 weeks, Jury travelled to the hospital every day.
“It did take a bit of a toll, seven days a week.“
She first got to hold both boys when they were 10 days old. And it was 77 days until the family were all home.
While Miles and his father Evan went home, Jury and Lincoln had to go to Waikato for a few days for Lincoln to have a “small surgery,” she said.
Jury will go back to her job as a financial accountant with Methanex in July and Evan will stay at home with their boys.
Methanex staff have just finished a four week fundraiser and raised $15,202 for the new neonatal unit at Taranaki Base Hospital, which will be called the Methanex Neonatal Unit.
The new unit will have more rooms for parents to stay in, she said.
“That will be a massive improvement. “I would have like to have stayed in,” Jury said.
“It would have been a lot easier.” And the old unit has a very small milk room with a couple of fridges and area mothers can wash bottles, she said.
“So it’s busy with everyone getting bottles ready.”
Adrian Sole, General Manager of the Taranaki Health Foundation, welcomed Methanex’s support.
“Methanex has always been a significant supporter of the Taranaki Health Foundation,” he said.
“It’s been fantastic to see how much Methanex staff have wanted to be involved in fundraising and how strongly they support the cause.”