How a Brooklyn hospital is making the wait easier for NICU families

With its dim lights and symphony of machinery, the neonatal intensive care unit at Maimonides Medical Center can feel like a world of its own.

Around the clock, doctors and nurses care for some of the hospital's smallest and most fragile patients, using equipment designed for newborns who can weigh only a few pounds.

"This is one of our blood pressure cuffs. And this is typically what we would use on our smallest babies," said Dr. Isaac Lati, an attending physician in the Maimonides NICU, as he points to a tab he's able to wrap around his pointer finger.

September is NICU Awareness Month, and for families, a premature birth can mean months of machines, milestones and waiting as their babies grow strong enough to leave the hospital.

Lati is part of the medical team working to get those babies home as soon as they are ready. In the meantime, Maimonides provides access to tools designed to help parents stay connected to their babies while they are away from the hospital.

One system, called Angel Eye, allows families to receive updates similar to video conferencing.

"It's connected to an app on their phone and they can go ahead and track, you know, see what the baby is doing. They can get a little update sometimes. We'll leave the family a little nice note saying, you know, 'I'm this old today,'" Lati said.

Maimonides is one of the only hospitals in New York state with the system.

It's also the largest of Brooklyn's two Level IV NICUs. New York City has a total of nine that have the capacity to care for the sickest and most medically complex newborns.

Hospital leaders say the need is there. Maimonides expanded its NICU in 2024, bringing the unit to 48 beds.

"We're a regional perinatal center. That basically means that a lot of the other hospitals in the area would send their sickest and smallest babies here to get whatever care that they may need," Lati said.

For Josselin Gutierrez and her daughter, the NICU was the beginning of a years-long journey.

Alba Lopez was born at Maimonides at 24 weeks. She spent six months in the hospital and remained on oxygen for three years.

Now 9 years old, Alba has big plans for the future.

"I'll be the best police officer ever," she eagerly said when asked what she wants to be when she grows up. 

In an interview translated from Spanish, Gutierrez recalled the fear of those early months.

"Very sad, but the doctors gave [me] a lot of motivation to keep going," she said through a translator.

For families facing a premature birth, the road home can be long, but professionals say there's an effort to make the journey a little sweeter.

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