 The Sanford Bemidji Medical Center delivers almost 1,000 babies every year and now they're expanding with a new nursery. Hedy Clotter has the story. Eleven weeks ago, Jamie Samuelson had her daughter Frankie at 32 weeks and at the time, Sanford Medical Center didn't accept babies born before 34 weeks so she was referred to U of M. She had to be in the regular nursery. That was all they had available. She wasn't able to be in a room with me. She had to be in the nursery for around the clock care from nurses and hospital staff. If they would have had this in place already, she would have been in one of these rooms and I could have stayed with her. The Sanford Bemidji Medical Center hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the grand opening of its new nursery. There's been an increase with infants needing a longer stay and the facility will provide newborns with extra care. We have been noticing an increasing trend of infants that are requiring a longer length of stay in our special care nursery, which are infants that need respiratory support or feeding issues, that sort of thing. Some of the infants who will stay in the nursery are due to substance-exposed pregnancies because their mothers use illicit drugs or even legal drugs, but the nursery isn't exclusive to them. We needed more space and individualized patient rooms was key to the healing environment for these kids. Construction of the new nursery began in July of last year and will be up and running by next week. The 4,800-square-foot facility is located on the third floor and has ten individual patient rooms for ill newborns, one procedure room, and one room for well-babies in discharge readiness. Each room will be private and so there is a space for the moms to be here and the dads and family members and they can come at any time and be a part of baby's care. The panda warmers in the rooms are for less critical infants and the giraffe beds are for the more critical infants. At times when parents can't be with their babies, volunteers come in and rock them. We're over the holidays, we did three evenings a week. We rock from four to eight, so we're great rockers. We rock New Year's Eve here. As part of the safe sleep initiative to practice safe sleeping habits, each baby born this year at Sanford will receive a sleep sack. Our winters are cold and we want our babies to be nice and warm when they go home. They'll finish setting up the rooms on Monday and Tuesday the babies will move in. The length of stay for each baby varies and can depend on what drugs the mothers were taking. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.