Grateful dad of baby saved at Mount Sinai hiking 85-km loop around Toronto to support NICU

Dylan Riches and his daughter Maliyah at left today and at right, Maliyah soon after she was born in 2020. (Submitted)

You can hear Dylan Riches’ voice tense up as he recalls what he describes as the worst 10 days of his life.

It started out as what was supposed to be one of the happiest; the birth of his daughter, Maliyah.

He and his partner Stephanie had been trying to get pregnant for a year and a half before they finally conceived.

Stephanie went into labour in July 2020, just a few months into the COVID-19 lockdown, and the couple went to Mount Sinai.

“We were essentially walking into a hospital that was already in shutdown,” he recalls.

After 20 hours of labour, things were going well. But then the doctor walked in and informed him that they would need to do an emergency C-section because Stephanie and the baby’s heart rate and blood pressure were spiking dramatically.

He was still taking that information in when another doctor came in five minutes later and told him that they didn’t have time for a C-section.

“(They) said ‘we can’t do that. We’re gonna have to use something called a kiwi, which is essentially almost like a suction cup that you affix to the top of the baby’s head and pull this baby out because it needs to come out immediately because it’s not breathing.’

“This is kind of when everything started.”

Maliyah soon after her birth. (Submitted)

The doctors were able to get Maliyah out and breathing, but the baby had a slew of health complications, including collapsed lungs, bacterial infections and gastric ulcers. She required two blood transfusions, a PICC, multiple IVs all over her body, and a breathing machine.

What followed was a period of around two weeks of intensive treatment, where a team of dozens of doctors and nurses monitored and cared for Maliyah constantly and also saw to Stephanie as she recovered.

“I always kind of describe it as the bell curve of like six sigma,” Riches says. “Like it was incredibly problematic, one thing after another, and then once all of these department heads started to really assign themselves to Maliyah 24 hours a day and their team — I think collectively there were 30 people working on it — as things got better, everything started to get better.

“So it was like, the worst 10 days of my entire life to ’there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.’”

Those two weeks felt like two years, Riches says.

“At the same time, we have to remember that mom was sick the whole time. So as much as you know, our focus was on Maliyah, my wife was still very sick. So it was, yeah — it was tough.”

Today Maliyah is a healthy and happy two-year-old with a “big personality” who loves swimming, dancing and soccer.

“This is a baby who goes to bed asleep straight for 12 hours and wakes up happy,” Riches says. “It’s truly like a dramatic change from how she was born. It’s incredible what happened.”

Maliyah and her mom, Stephanie. (Submitted)

While Maliyah’s health has changed dramatically, the overwhelming gratitude her parents feel toward the hospital staff has not.

The care they received made them feel “incredible to be living in Canada” Riches says.

“I think it was this feeling of what a wonderful life we live to be able to have immediate care given to us round the clock from probably some of the smartest people in medicine,” he says. “So as scared as I was from beginning to end, terrified really, I knew that this was the absolute best place that they could be.”

Following their ordeal, the couple put together gift baskets for all 30 nurses who helped care for the family, throwing in moisturizers, candles, hand-written thank-you notes and pictures of Maliyah. But they wanted to do something more.

Dylan Riches with his daughter, Maliyah. (Submitted)

Inspired by a challenging charity hike he had done with his brother — a royal marine in England — a few years ago, Riches came up with the idea of doing an annual hike to benefit Mount Sinai’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“It’s normally not something that most people can do. So I wanted to kind of show donors that, you know, the team and I were willing to exert ourselves to the most extreme that we can handle in order to raise money and awareness really, to this just life-changing floor at Mount Sinai.”

Thus was born Maliyah’s hike.

Maliyah's Hike team members. (Submitted)

For the first hike in 2020, the team hiked 60 km from the foot of Yonge Street to East Gwillimbury. They set out to raise $3,000, but ended up raising $10,000. Last year they walked 70 km from Hamilton to the foot of Yonge Street, surpassing their $12,000 goal by about $1,600.

This year, the small team of around 16 hikers is doing an 85-kilometre loop around Toronto Nov. 4-5, hoping to raise $20,000. They’ll be starting in the East Beaches, heading west along the lakeshore to Humber River, then north to the belt line, east to the Bayview Extension, and south to 1 Yonge Street.

(This year’s route was originally set to start in Bolton, but was adjusted for better safety).

The hike, Riches says, is likely to take around 18 hours, with stops only for bathroom breaks.

“Music is key. Podcasts are key, good food,” he says.

While they aren’t looking for more hikers (the feat takes months of training, as well as recovery afterwards), the team is looking for more donations, hoping to once again beat their goal.

And, Riches says, to raise awareness.

“You don’t get much better care than this around the world.”

Maliyah's Hike team members. (Submitted)