Back in the saddle

I’m back. Four months ago I signed off and stepped out to get ready to have baby number two. After a month of patiently waiting for her to arrive, Molly Paige Lindecker was born on May 21. There were some complications, and she spent the first week of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Sutter Hospital, but she’s a big, strong girl and has made a complete recovery.
We had many doctors and nurses to thank for making sure my baby kept breathing. It wasn’t the experience we had hoped for or even expected, but the support from friends, family and co-workers was astonishing.
I can’t list everyone here who supported us, but I think it’s important to publicly mention two organizations that made a difference — the WCC House and the Santa Rosa Quilt Guild.
The WCC House is a modular home located across the street from Sutter’s Chanate Road hospital. It has been funded since 2004 by the World Croquet Championship Charitable Foundation and anybody who has a sick child in the hospital and who would normally have to travel outside of Santa Rosa to go home and back can use the house, free of charge.
For us, it meant my husband and I could stay together in the house while Molly was in the NICU. It meant I was able to breastfeed my newborn every few hours around the clock and we didn’t have to rely on bottles or formula. It meant I could snuggle my daughter (wires and all) whenever I wanted — even if it was the middle of the night. It meant we had access to a refrigerator, stove and microwave to eat healthy meals in between doctor visits and feeding times.
Before Molly was born, I hadn’t known the WCC House even existed. After she was born, it saved our sanity and was one bright spot during the hardest week of our lives.
Another important moment for us was when Molly graduated from the “radiant warmer” — where they keep the very sick babies — to a simple open crib in the NICU (the kind of crib you see babies in a hospital nursery in). While she was still connected to lots of monitors, it meant she was getting better. With that move, she was given a quilt that was clipped to the top of her crib. It was the first thing that was hers. We hadn’t been able to put a cute outfit or cap on her, but now she had her very own quilt.
Molly’s quilt is bright blue, yellow and pink and was made and donated by the Santa Rosa Quilt Guild, an organization with more than 200 members that meets once a month and in 2011 alone, donated 1,330 quilts to “organizations serving people in need in our community.”
While Molly had to go through a lot for us to stay in the WCC House and to get that quilt, we feel very fortunate that organizations like the Quilt Guild and WCC Charitable Foundation have partnered with the local hospitals to help local families.
On another note:
For the last three months, I read The Healdsburg Tribune to keep up with the local news. I found myself for the first time really enjoying the paper in the same way that our readers hopefully do. I didn’t have an inside line on the interviews, meetings or conversations they were having with people in the community, so I looked forward to the mail delivery on Thursday afternoon so I could read their stories and learn about the issues. I was certainly up to date on topics like spit-up and cradle cap, but the Tribune kept me in the loop with news about local businesses opening up, changes in the schools and budget struggles at the city.
We often say here that you can’t get the news and information we provide about your community anywhere else, and I believe that now more than ever. So, when you see us around town, please let us know what stories you are most interested in and continue sending us news tips and press releases. We’re all in this together.
Kerrie Lindecker is the editor of The Healdsburg Tribune and a mother of two.