Local nonprofit to boost support for parents with newborns admitted to WakeMed neonatal ICU

That's why the hospital plans next year to add a new resource that will be available to provide support to parents whose children are being treated at Wake County's only pediatric, in-patient care facility.

"One of the most stressful things that you could probably ever go through is having a sick kid," said Latoshia Rouse, who gave birth to triplets in 2013.

She went into labor 14 weeks early at WakeMed, where the stress of a premature childbirth was compounded by having three newborns.

"While you want to celebrate (and) you want to be excited, you are also very scared," she said. "You're not knowing if your kids are going to make it. And then you have all the other challenges of life (because) life doesn't stop because you have a baby in the hospital or three."

With her kids in WakeMed's neonatal intensive care unit for nearly five months, Rouse and her husband struggled to stay afloat financially and emotionally. Hospital officials say the family isn't alone and that many families whose children are born into the NICU unit often struggle.

That's why, starting in 2018, the Me Fine Foundation will provide emotional and financial support to WakeMed families whose infants are receiving care in the NICU. The local nonprofit hopes to also provide aid for patients in the facility's pediatric intensive care unit at some point.

"We're glad we can serve some of the families here, and it's the community that has allowed us to do this," said Richard Averett, who works for the Me Fine Foundation

While Rouse's triplets are now 4 years old, happy and healthy, she said the program to help struggling parents of newborns at WakeMed is still desperately needed.

"That would have alleviated a lot of the stress," Rouse said. "Because at every turn there's a another mountain that you have to climb, and being able to have someone or some organization say that, ‘Hey, we're here to help, and we can take this mountain for you,' (would be) everything."