Jace Schurman’s story
Ayzlin Ethier was having a typical pregnancy before she woke up at her Nanaimo home in early October 2018 to find some bleeding at 31 weeks. Within hours, she and her partner Kirkland Schurman had been transported by helicopter from Vancouver Island to Royal Columbian Hospital, where a detached placenta meant their baby boy would be delivered several weeks premature.
Ashley and Hazel Durance
Ashley Durance had just survived a life-threatening complication of pregnancy. Her newborn girl Hazel, among the most premature and smallest ever to be born at Royal Columbian Hospital, was under constant watch in the intensive care unit for newborns. And now Ashley’s father Rick Walsh was about to undergo open heart surgery. With Christmas of 2016 only a couple of days away, it was hard to believe all that had happened in the last several weeks.
Lillian Yamaguchi Jones’s Story
She is able to joke now that it was a sneeze, and not a push, that led to her daughter’s birth. But at the time, Nobue Yamaguchi Jones was stunned to have given birth at only 25 weeks pregnant. Equally shocking was just how small the newborn girl was: 380 grams, just over three quarters of a pound. Lillian Yamaguchi Jones had become the smallest baby Royal Columbian Hospital’s neonatal intensive care team ever had to support.