How Montefiore Nyack Hospital is Helping Families Navigate the Impossible

Montefiore Nyack Hospital has launched a new initiative to support bereaved families. The RCT spoke with Andrea McGowan, MSN, RNC, NE-BC, senior director of Maternal Child Health Nursing and Prenatal Services and Maria Emerson, MD, MS, FACOG, and medical director of The Jacobs Family Maternity Center at Montefiore Nyack Hospital, about Montefiore Nyack Hospital’s work to support parents who experience a stillbirth, as well as their efforts to prevent stillbirths. “We place as much emphasis on a patient and family who have lost a newborn as we do someone who has a healthy child,” shared McGowan. Montefiore Nyack’s new Rowan Mae Butterfly Suite is helping to do just that.

Rowan Mae’s Butterfly Suite at  Montefiore Nyack Hospital was dedicated in October by the Hernandez/Minaya family after they lost their daughter Rowan Mae in July of 2021. “Most families who experience stillbirth and neonatal tragedies do not have a safe space away from successful deliveries,” said Felicia Hernandez. “After experiencing the loss of my daughter Rowan, my mother Jena Hernandez and I made it our mission to support grieving families while educating expectant parents. The butterfly is the universal symbol of pregnancy loss. The Butterfly Suite at Montefiore Nyack is Rowan Mae’s enduring legacy.”

Dr. Emerson shared that everything included in the Rowan Mae Butterfly Suite came from what the Hernandez/Minaya family found useful in their bereavement when they lost Rowan, as well as a few elements they felt would have been beneficial in any grieving family’s healing process.

Each family who utilizes the Rowan Mae Butterfly Suite receives a comfort kit from Aaliyah in Action, a nonprofit that provides mothers with a self-care package filled with items meant to provide comfort, such as shower steamers, soft socks, lip balm, local support resources and books by other families who have experienced loss.

One of the biggest comforts for these new parents is the gift of time with their baby. A CuddleCot is a cooling gel pad that maintains a newborn’s body temperature for an extended period of time and delays the natural processes that occur after death. Traditionally, a baby may be taken away soon after birth, but the CuddleCot allows for families to spend time with their baby at their own pace. This time provided by the CuddleCot allows mothers to recover from birth, for family members to visit, and for the new parents to make memories with their child.

The suite is designed in a nursery setting to help facilitate these memories, including a rocking chair and bookshelves with children’s books for siblings and parents to read to their child. The Butterfly Suite is designed to have the capacity to hold multiple family members and includes a queen size bed and pull out sofa bed, giving everyone the space to grieve in their own way, in their own time.

Dr. Emerson emphasized how every patient follows their own timeline with grief. “In many hospitals, there are pictures that are taken and parents don’t always want it immediately – but you’ll inevitably get those calls where they’re [asking], ‘Were there any pictures taken?’”. Once parents are ready, remembering their child with keepsakes or photos is a helpful aspect of the grieving process.

“We’re usually considered a happy field of medicine,” said Dr. Emerson as she mentioned how the art in the hallways of the Labor and Delivery unit typically centers on life, birth and babies. “Those might be reminders of what you’ve lost”.

Even a detail as seemingly minute as hallway art has gone into the careful planning of the Rowan Mae Butterfly Suite. Centering the grieving family’s wellbeing dictated where the team would place the suite, the route new mothers would take to enter the suite, the style of art to display on the walls, and how staff would interact with the grieving families.

McGowan shared that Montefiore Nyack hired an outside educator, who has worked with Butterfly Suites around the country and specializes in bereavement, to instruct hospital staff how to best support struggling families.

While every case is unique, creating a baseline of understanding and empathy creates the opportunity to personalize help. Small gestures, such as not congratulating the bereaved parents or commenting on the mother’s body, as well as providing a separate space to grieve away from successful deliveries, makes a positive difference in the emotional state of grieving families.

Montefiore Nyack has demonstrated an admirable commitment to supporting families that have had to endure the loss of a child, while also working to prevent these sort of tragedies from happening at all. The hospital recently began participating in a program titled “Count the Kicks,” a public health initiative that began in 2008 to promote awareness of the health of unborn children. “It encourages expecting parents to monitor their babies’ natal movements, starting in the third trimester,” said McGowan. Montefiore Nyack is implementing this program at its Prenatal Center as well as into the Labor and Delivery unit for patients who are triaged and sent home to monitor their babies status.

“It’s really a way of learning how your particular baby moves,” said Dr. Emerson. “The body doesn’t read the textbook…Not every baby is going to move exactly the same way.” This program, which has an app that connects with smart phones and watches, helps to more quickly assess changes in a baby’s activity in the womb, which helps to identify early signs of distress.

According to Count the Kicks, 1,326 babies a year are stillborn in New York. This amounts to 1 in every 64 births. When the Count the Kicks program began in Iowa, the state saw a 32% drop in their stillbirth rates within the first ten years. The number of stillborn babies in Iowa is now 168 a year – a 155% difference to New York’s 1,326.

When supporting loved ones who have lost their child, Dr. Emerson reminds friends and families that the couple who has experienced loss may not be ready for a hug or a support group quite yet, but it is good to learn what resources are available and to be able to offer those resources as support. Connection with other families is a huge step in not feeling alone, McGowan sharing that “it’s important for a bereaved couple and family to know that there are others out there who have experienced the same or something similar, and to be able to connect with them and gain support from one another”.

Tommy’s, the UK’s largest charity working to better understand stillbirths, miscarriages, and premature births, shared a few phrases that parents have shared are upsetting during a time of grief. Some of these phrases include referring to the stillborn baby as “it”, implications that the parents can “always have another one”, or pretending the death did not happen and not talking about the baby. These phrases can do more harm than good. Instead, try to offer concrete support to the new parent or parents. This can look like asking when you can drop off a homecooked meal, if you can help take care of other children, or simply offering a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on. Offer words of genuine empathy and do not try to minimize or downplay the loss. Many parents reported to Tommy’s that speaking their child’s name, holding a funeral and having loved ones acknowledge the loss of life was helpful in their healing process.

While there is no one way to grieve after a loss, the Butterfly Suite at Montefiore Nyack is helping to provide bereaved families with the support needed to begin their healing journey.

The Jacobs Family Maternity Center at Montefiore Nyack has been recognized as a High-Performing Hospital for Uncomplicated Pregnancy in 2024 and 2025 by U.S. News and World Report.