Some of the city's youngest hospital patients were on the move Sunday, as dozens of high-risk infants and expecting mothers were moved from the Women's College Hospital into a new women and babies facility at Sunnybrook Hospital.
The permanent move transferred critically ill and premature newborns, women in labour and Sunnybrook staff to their new home.
"We are moving mothers who are on our high-risk floor who have pregnancy complications. We are moving mothers and babies from our post-partum floor, and we are moving babies from our neonatal intensive care units who are the tiniest babies in Ontario," said Jennifer Blake, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at the Sunnybrook Heath Sciences Centre.
Pregnant women and 35 newborns, many in incubators, were transferred to the state-of-the-art facility on Bayview Avenue, north of Eglinton Avenue, taking the nine-kilometre ambulance ride from the central Women's College Hospital on Grenville Street Sunday morning. The entire process took three hours.
Sunnybrook's new two-floor, 120,000 square foot facility will deliver approximately 4,250 babies every year, one quarter of which are considered high risk. The Women and Babies Program also houses the largest breastfeeding clinic in the country.
Sandra Thompson welcomed her twin girls Samantha and Hailey 11 weeks ago. The twins were born three months premature. Had they waited, they would have been among the first customers at Sunnybrook's new facility.
"I was hoping to deliver at the new facility, which would have meant I was full term. However, I delivered here and we are now moving," Thompson said before the transfer. "If I have made it through everything I have made it through so far, the move is nothing."
One major benefit to the new location was space. Each high-risk patient will have their own room. At the Women's College Hospital, 20 incubators were grouped together.
By noon, all 70 patients had arrived at the new Sunnybrook location and were greeted by a cheering staff.
With a report from CTV's Sneha Kulkarni
