... or more accurately ...

Dear Readers:

ORDINARILY IN THIS SPACE you'd find a personal story by one of our readers. This month is a little different, because I'm the new editor of the Miracles online newsletter, and I have an experience I'd like to relate -- one involving the birth of my son William, in 2002.

It started with next to no warning, as such experiences often will. As I had been preparing to head out to work on February 22, my wife Jennifer called to me from upstairs. “Michael, do you have any meetings today? Will I be able to reach you if something comes up?" She was pregnant, and felt an unusual discomfort in her abdomen that morning.

“Honey, if something came up it wouldn't matter if I had a meeting," I said. I had a moment of confidence that no such crisis would arise.

And I was wrong.

After a short lunch break that Friday afternoon, I returned to my office, where my cell phone was buzzing on the desk. It was Jen, in a message she'd left moments earlier.

"Michael, come home. My water broke..."

She was still in her second trimester. Her June 8 due date was three-and-a-half months away.

That evening, at a mere 24 1/2 weeks, and under two pounds, our son Will was born at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. The reason? Unknown, as half of all premature births are.

From moments after birth, our hatchling was on life support. To see him, we had to look past all sorts of mechanical equipment -- ventilator, monitors, feeding and breathing tubes, sandbags holding him still, IV hookups, and various wires trailing off.

To the pulse-ox monitor we'd look, and back at him. To the monitor. And back, watching his chest rise and fall, paced by the metronomic ventilator inflating his raw lungs. It would beep insistently whenever his blood oxygen level dropped below 85%. It went like this: 86 ... 87 ... 83 (BEEP-BEEP-BEEP) ... 82 (BEEP-BEEP) ... 79 (BEEP-BEEP-BEEP) ... 75 (BEEP-BEEP), and then a nurse would step over to observe until his oxygen saturation improved, and it often would on its own. Sometimes they would turn a dial to increase the percentage of oxygen in the air the ventilator pushed into his lungs.

The next day, still stunned, and with Jen still recovering from her c-section, we met with Dr. Stephen Kovacs, the senior Vassar neonatologist, who answered our questions and briefed us on what to expect with a baby born so early. He emphasized that any progress would be slow, which even with our still limited knowledge we could see was true. A walk past the maternity ward, where full-term babies on display (some as large as 6, 7 or even 8 pounds … simply enormous) reinforced the fact that it would be months before Will might be sufficiently large and healthy to come home.

We soon learned that while the growth and healing process would be lengthy, a life-threatening crisis could come at any moment.

Sooner than I'd have ever expected we became somewhat acclimated to the ordeal, and had formed a routine. We called the NICU every morning upon waking, at night before sleep, and often at other times of day. Jen would go to the hospital daily, and I'd meet her there after work. She had become friendly with many of the nurses who cared for Will: Amy, Thelma, Mary, Janet, Linda, Melinda, and several others. The staff and care at Vassar Brothers were exemplary. We also developed a camaraderie with other NICU parents. It wasn't entirely awful.

We got a rare call from the hospital one night when we were home, saying that Will had a "de-sat". We were concerned, but focused on the fact that he was stable. When we saw him next, nothing seemed different.

When he was born, Will's skin was red -- a deep translucent merlot. After a few weeks, it had matured to the point that it was perfect baby-pink. As we were preparing to leave for home one evening, I joked to James, another NICU dad and new friend, “Will's complexion is the envy of the NICU." He smiled and agreed.

As I put on my coat, my eyes lingered on my son, and what I saw was so odd that I looked away and back again, to refresh my gaze. His pinkness was fading to a dusky blue-purple -- in moments, like when one adjusts color on a television.

A nurse was working on reapplying an oxygen sensor to his foot, and seemed to be having a problem getting it right, because the pulse-ox monitor was reading so far out of the target zone. There was no sound because she'd appropriately silenced the monitor to avoid it sounding while she repositioned the sensor.

I said, “Is something wrong? He doesn't look good."

She replied, over her shoulder while focusing intently on his tiny foot and the sensor, that she was trying to get the famously erratic sensor to read correctly.

“He really isn't looking good. I think you've got to do something," I said, recognizing she wasn't seeing his pallor. I didn't want to waste a second, and ran over to get the nurse practitioner, saying that Will wasn't getting oxygen. It was probably then that I fully realized what a “de-sat" is -- it means desaturated of oxygen.

In moments she had a small medical team attending to him. His breathing tube was blocked, so it was pulled from his throat, and they “bagged" him, pushing oxygen into his lungs by putting a bag attached to an oxygen source over his miniscule mouth and nose and squeezing the bag by hand. The sensor on his foot was reapplied, and for two-and-a-half hours the team, soon joined by a neonatologist, worked to resuscitate our son. Jennifer and I sat six feet away, watching the nurses and doctor, and getting only glimpses of our son, and transfixed by the monitors, which showed his heart rate racing and dropping, and his oxygen levels wavering into dangerous territory for extended periods.

Jennifer's watch alarm sounded to remind her to pump and store her milk for our boy. She headed off to do it, not pausing for a second, confident that he'd need it ... even while I believed that William wouldn't survive the night. Her dedication and confidence in the face of such calamity were to me heroic, and inspired me to have a small hope too, even as I expected the worst. We didn't leave that night until he had stabilized, and until we had a chance to talk with the neonatologist, Dr. Triegel.

Afterwards it was harder for us to be at home or work, resuming normal life, where any ability to concentrate was overtaken by mental images of our child pinned down by sandbags and punctured by tubes and wires. We also discovered that such constant apprehension could actually be intensified simply by the phone ringing (and because people cared, it rang a lot). Every time the phone rang it brought fear that it might be the hospital calling, and there was nothing we wanted to hear that might have come from a phone call originating on their end.

The incident that night was the defining moment of my early fatherhood. Until then, I didn't know my function; there was nothing in the experience of being father to an extremely premature baby, a seemingly passive role, that paralleled what I had expected in caring for a newborn. Jennifer was surer of her role as mother, with her pumping and having begun the daily hands-on education of how to care for our son. But by acting quickly and hailing help for my boy, and watching what happened after, my own role became tangible.

However unprepared his early arrival had caught us … no matter how much tenderness and care he received in the NICU … and despite our shock and lack of knowledge, we had to put aside notions of an idyllic parenthood and become our boy's protectors and advocates. We had to ask about treatments, learn about what such early early babies typically experience, and what we might expect in the future, because he'd be our exclusive responsibility long after he left the NICU. There could be no passive role for us.

That tiny kid in the NICU navigated other medical hazards, and grew to over six pounds, before coming home in late May after 96 days, still on oxygen delivered through a nasal canula. He's now a focused, funny, and astonishingly physical 3 1/2 year-old … and the older brother to two full-term siblings: a sister and a brother.

Our experience with Will's early birth has given me a mission and even a passion in life, and it's a reason why I sought work at the March of Dimes. I believe my son wouldn't be alive were it not for the research they've (now we've) funded in the past. In doing my job well I hope to help the March of Dimes continue the work to benefit future parents and babies -- people you'll know and people I'll know -- with new discoveries and innovations in care for premature babies, in ways of reducing the incidences of premature birth, and eliminating other too-common maladies facing newborns and their mothers.

New parents have a right to expect a healthy, chubby, and loud baby. With your help, it's possible.

Thank you and be well,

Michael F. Nolan

Miracles Editor