Nurses reunite with first baby born at Long Beach E.D.

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Amanda Bochain had just sat down at her computer to work from her Shore Road apartment on Oct. 1 when her water broke — three days after she was due to give birth to her second child, a baby girl. She began screaming in pain as the contractions came once per minute.

Her husband, Frank Bacchi, rushed her to their car and began driving toward South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside. But with the contractions so close together, they knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

“I thought we were having her in the car,” Bochain said.

Instead, the couple made a detour to South Nassau’s Emergency Department on Bay Drive in Long Beach, where the staff delivered their daughter, Lia Bacchi — the first baby born at the facility, which opened in 2015, three years after Hurricane Sandy, on the former Long Beach Medical Center campus.

“I was glad that this was here,” Bochain said on Jan. 18, when she, Bacchi, baby Lia and their older daughter Gianna, 3, reunited with the nurses who delivered Lia. “Anywhere is better than this two-door Honda Civic.”

“I saw her in a wheelchair and she was screaming in the lobby,” recalled nurse Eileen Carolan, who helped deliver Lia. “We grabbed the baby warmer, we got everybody in here — we coached her through the contractions.”

Within a half hour of Bochain’s arrival at the emergency department — and with the help of nurses Nicole LaBarca and Amanda Biehayn — Lia was born.

“We hadn’t lived in Long Beach that long, so the only reason why I knew this place was here was because I use those handball courts nearby,” Bacchi said.

Though he saw the words “Emergency Department,” Bacchi said he didn’t realize that the facility might not have a maternity ward. He and Bochain later learned that Lia was the first baby born in the emergency department.

The department operates as a 911 ambulance-receiving facility, and offers around-the-clock emergency medical care. It is meant to serve as a temporary facility as South Nassau moves forward with a plan to build a 25,000-square-foot medical pavilion on the former site of the LBMC.

Though it does not function as the full-service hospital that many residents have called for, patients who are treated and stabilized at the emergency department and who require hospital admission or advanced treatment are transferred by ambulance to South Nassau — a Level II trauma center and an advanced cardiac center — or a hospital of their choice.

The full-service maternity ward is located at the Oceanside campus, which is where planned deliveries are usually performed, explained Joe Calderone, South Nassau’s senior vice president of corporate communications and development. The Long Beach emergency department is also equipped to deliver babies in emergencies, with a baby warmer and emergency-trained doctors and nurses who are on site around the clock.

“Everything happened so fast, and they were so professional, I wasn’t really worried,” Bacchi said. “I literally ran in here and was like, ‘We need this now.’ Without any explanation, they took care of the patient really, really well. We couldn’t ask for anything better.”

“Everyone was friendly and excited that there was a new baby,” Bochain added. “It was a good welcome. We just wanted to say thank you — we’re so happy it was here and it wasn’t in our car. And that she came out a perfect, healthy and happy baby.”