The Healing Journey

January 8, 2025

Jocelyn Maminta is well known in Connecticut media. She was a news anchor and medical reporter for more than 20 years at WTNH News 8 in New Haven and worked throughout the United States. Several years ago she left journalism to become Director of Multi-Media Communications for the Fairfield Region of Hartford Healthcare and works from a studio at St. Vincent Medical Center in Bridgeport.

Over the years she has been active in many non-profit initiatives, but one in particular has changed many lives and helped families facing a crisis. Caroline’s Room began with the personal grief that she and her husband, Gary Doyens, endured with the loss of their 2-month-old daughter Caroline, who was born prematurely at 30 weeks, and because she had development issues, she weighed less than two pounds.

The couple and their 3-year-old son gathered around the newborn’s bed after the doctors told them they couldn’t save the little girl’s life, and the nurse came to disconnect her from their life-support machines and rolled out a cloth partition to give them privacy.

“What was terrible about the cloth partition is that it signaled to all the parents in the room that something was bad,” she recalled in an interview in Seasons Magazine. “They were asked to leave the room. You wanted to hold onto your baby as long as you could. You knew you had to let go eventually because parents had to come back in the room to see their babies, and so, there was really no place for us to go.”

“And then I realized, that fathers needed to hold their babies too, and I gave her to Gary,” she said. “She took her last breath in her dad’s arms.”

Their experience inspired them to found Caroline’s Room, which is “a safe haven for families coping with the challenges and uncertainties surrounding the birth of a premature baby.”

There are 11 Caroline’s Rooms in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. The first was created at Yale New Haven Children’s NICU.

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