Photo: Shelcie Holbert
A first-time mom-to-be had one of the most stressful experiences of her life when she visited New York City on a business trip in June at 23 weeks pregnant.
Shelcie Holbert, a 23-year-old sales representative for Kiehl’s from North Carolina, traveled to N.Y.C. on June 17 and was preparing to visit the company’s flagship store when she felt something wasn’t right.
Holbert walked into the emergency room at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, where doctors quickly discovered she was having contractions and put her in an ambulance to Mount Sinai West, which was better equipped to deal with preterm labor.
Doctors soon learned that Holbert, who was due to give birth on October 12, was already three centimeters dilated.
“I felt like I was overthinking until they said that,” Holbert tells PEOPLE.
Eight days later, the medication her doctors were giving her to stop the contractions was working so well that Holbert had a plan to fly home and check into a hospital in North Carolina. But that morning she went into labor.
“I was looking up plane tickets to go home and started getting contractions,” she says.
Shelcie Holbert
In addition to caring for their daughter, the couple also had to find a way to live in New York City until around Holbert’s original due date or longer. Their initial hotel cost $4,000 for one month.
After Holbert and Wallace befriended a fellow NICU parent, Kim Kaplan, and she posted about their situation in her local mom Facebook group, word spread.
Other local women brought the new mom and dad home-cooked food and donated gift cards and postpartum and nursing clothing. Holbert only had three days of all-black outfits that she’d packed for her business trip. A friend from Holbert’s childhood also starteda GoFundMefor the family.
As a southerner, Holbert says she had “this misconstrued idea of what New Yorkers are like. But I’m happy my daughter is a New Yorker now because I’ve received so much help here from total strangers.” Holbert recently made one of those strangers, Jenna, Rosalie’s godmother.
“I’ve never had somebody do so many selfless things for me, and I want her to be more than a friend for us,” Holbert says. “I feel like I’ve known her for years, and I needed to do that.”
source: people.com
