Neonatal staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township, had good reason to celebrate on Jan. 14 as they commemorated the 20th anniversary of their neonatal intensive care unit, as well as 20-plus years of service at the NICU’s former location at the Allentown hospital site.

The unit’s employees were treated to cake and snacks in the waiting room, as well as colorful posters and displays created by co-workers showcasing memories and quotes gathered over the past two decades, signature moments in neonatal care and the history of Lehigh Valley’s neonatal ICU itself.

One family who understands the benefits of the NICU’s services very well is Rebekka Snider and her fiancée, Vinnie Foglio, of New Tripoli.

Snider was at the NICU during the anniversary celebrations taking care of daughter, Sophia Foglio.

Originally due around Jan. 12, Sophia was born about 16 weeks premature and has been in the care of neonatal unit staff since the end of September 2019.

“She decided at 24 weeks that she was going to come,” Snider said.

Snider expressed her gratitude to the staff for all their help, kindness and expertise taking care of Sophia, noting it made the unexpected, complicated situation of having a child early much easier to navigate.

“The nurses, the respiratory therapists, the doctors, everybody has been great,” Snider said. “I don’t know if we would have been able to get through it without them. They’ve been a really great support system, there’s lots of staff members who have been here over 20 years. You have the best of the best taking care of your baby, and it really has become our second home here.”

She said that in the nearly four months Sophia has spent in the NICU, she has grown from weighing just over 1 pound at birth to more than 5 and a 1/2 pounds and has moved from being on a ventilator to using a nasal cannula.

Sophia is also taking formula from a bottle instead of a feeding tube.

This, her mom said, occurred around her expected due date.

Snider said she is surprised that more parents are not familiar with the NICU and believes there may be a skewed perception of the role children’s hospitals play in providing care.

Based on her experiences with Sophia and the LVHN staff, she suggests parents learn more about the benefits and care available in a neonatal unit.

“I don’t think people realize that this is even here,” Snider said. “A lot of people when they hear ‘children’s hospital,’ they just think of trauma. I don’t think they really realize all the good stuff that you guys do here.”

Snider and NICU staff would like to have little Sophia home in the near future, hopefully in February.

Snider is looking forward to “having all the tubes and everything off Sophia.”

Snider said she will “absolutely” bring her daughter back for a NICU reunion in 2021.

“That’ll be pretty neat for the people who have taken care of her. They will see her once she hits 2 and she’s running around wild,” Snider said. “Everybody here takes great care of the babies, and they truly care about what they’re doing. Everybody’s here for the right reasons.”

The original NICU was founded in the mid-1970s by the late Dr. Forrest G. Moyer at Lehigh Valley Hospital, 17th Street, Allentown, and was the first neonatal intensive care unit in the region.

On Jan. 14, 2000, the unit officially moved from 17th Street to its current location in the Jaindl Family Pavilion, now part of Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital.

Many of the staff members attending the celebration had spent time working at both locations.

Several wore commemorative T-shirts reading “MOVE 2000 NICU,” which were distributed 20 years ago to celebrate the changing location.

NICU Director Denise Keeler told The Press she is proud of how much the neonatal unit had grown from 17th Street into the current 40-bed unit.

“We’ve come a long way,” Keeler, who has been with the unit since 1982, said. “We were at just 18 beds, and we’ve been increasing in size and services ever since.”

Floor space and the number have beds are not the only things that have changed over the past 20 years.

Neonatologist Marijo Zelinka has been with the neonatal ICU for 28 years, and during the celebrations, she described how numerous specializations have been added to improve care for ill or premature children.

“When I started, we had cardiology and surgery, and I think that was it,” Zelinka said, as she looked over displays detailing the NICU’s early days.

Zelinka said since she started with the NICU they have added more pediatric surgeons, started high frequency ventilation to aid newborns’ breathing, added a follow-up clinic, increased the subspecialty pool and added advanced programs such as hypothermia therapy, among other practices, to bring up the NICU’s level of care.

Wendy Kowalski, medical director of the NICU, said the addition of these specialized practices have allowed the Cedar Crest NICU to become the only Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, providing the highest level of intensive care, in the region. “We essentially built the children’s hospital around the NICU,” she said.

Despite seeing some 650 babies each year and regularly operating near full-capacity, Kowalski said she wishes the unit was better known by local parents.

She hopes families come to know about how they could benefit from the NICU’s services and care.

“People hear about the children’s hospitals in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, but I think people don’t realize we’re here in the Valley with all the specialties and subspecialists we offer,” Kowalski said. “We’re close to home, and that can be so important for families with such young children.”