Due to complications at 30 weeks, baby Pearl was born 12 hours away from home after her mom Mariah was airlifted from Powell River to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
Pearl went straight to the NICU. And in the middle of everything, Mariah faced one more question she never expected: where would they stay?
She was freshly postpartum, the hospital needed her bed, and it was the weekend. She remembers scrambling to find somewhere for herself, her husband, and her 2-year-old son Alfie to go.
Then she was offered a room at the Ronald McDonald House Family Room in Kamloops, right down the hall from Pearl. “It took a huge weight off of our shoulders,” she says.
That room became so much more than somewhere to stay. Mariah could be with Pearl at any hour, day or night. There were warm meals and a quiet place to sit when the hospital felt like too much. She met another mother going through something similar and, for the first time, didn’t feel quite so alone.
And as Pearl reached her milestones, Mariah reached one of her own. Her first Mother’s Day, her first as a mom of two, spent in the hospital but made a little brighter. “It made what could have been a not-so-great day a little bit brighter.”
