ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — November is Prematurity Awareness Month, and in the U.S., one in ten births is premature.
In St. Pete, Johns Hopkins All Children's has a level-four NICU, offering the best of the best care for the tiniest of patients.
One of those patients is 6-week-old Catalina Perez-Vasquez. She was born at just 27 weeks and is one of 87 patients currently receiving care at Johns Hopkins.
"I always say that if she's having a good day, I'm having a good day," Jessica Vasquez said while standing next to her firstborn daughter's incubator.
Before Catalina was born, Vasquez's water broke weeks earlier. After constant monitoring, she had an emergency C-section birth at 27 weeks pregnant. Weeks before her daughter was born, both Jessica and her husband David Perez were left wondering if they'd see the day they took their daughter home from the hospital.
"I think that's what I felt the majority of the time was not knowing if I was going to have a baby at all," Vasquez said. "And the whole time, you're just hoping that you get to take a baby home."
When Catalina's care needs exceeded the abilities of HCA Brandon, where she was born, she was transported to Johns Hopkins.
HCA Brandon has a level three NICU unit. Johns Hopkins has a level four.
"Level four means that we provide the highest care possible for infants and newborns," NICU Director Dr. Angel Luciano said. "That means that we provide a lot of specialties that are not available in other NICUs."
Some of those specialty equipment items include ventilators and incubators for the most preemie of premature babies. Johns Hopkins also has a team of providers working around the clock to guide new parents through everything from pediatric dietary needs to NICU neurosurgeons.
"One of the main issues that she came here was to take care of this brain bleed so that having her care here will improve her chances of having improved what we call neurodevelopmental outcomes," Luciano said regarding Catalina.
While there are other level four NICU units across Tampa Bay, Luciano said only Johns Hopkins offers cardiac neonatal surgeries, a diaphragmatic hernia program, and a surgical airway program. It's what attracts patients from across Florida and across the Southeast.
When you're welcoming the smallest of babies, they need the highest quality of care to survive.
"I mean, she was so tiny," David Perez said of his new daughter. "She's barely over a pound.
"And it's nice seeing like, this is what we've been working towards and fighting for. After having been given pretty much the terminal status from almost the beginning of the pregnancy. So yeah, it's kind of indescribable."
For both mom and dad, it's a chance to breathe knowing their daughter has so many already fighting for her health.
"I can't breathe unless she's breathing and if something's wrong with her, I'm like holding my breath. Until then, you know she moves on to the next thing," Catalina's mom said.
Johns Hopkins is the only level four NICU in Pinellas County.
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.