SONOGRAM ON PREVIOUS PAGE COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
{ the preemie prism}
thinking what I was thinking. Our son Cameron, who was so small at birth that he could fit into the palms of our hands, had just taken down a pretty good player. ¶ I watched as Cameron popped off the downed player and strutted to his teammates, his slight but muscled body disappearing into the jumbled huddle. My mind flashed back to the neonatal intensive care unit and the doctors and nurses hovering over him. ¶ “He’s a fighter,” I remember a doctor saying to me. “But he’s very small. The first 24 hours will tell how he’ll do. …”
not that I have low expectations of my children, but I can never forget their pre- carious start in life. When they were born nearly 11 weeks before their due date in 1996, my husband, Benjamin Lumpkin, and I weren’t even sure our boys would make it, let alone be able to play sports, take up the violin or sing in their school chorus. For the parents of a preemie — a baby born before 37 weeks gestation — the experience can range from awful (the baby’s death) to blessed (survival with few, if any, lasting medical issues). These days, more women are giving
I
birth to preemies, partly because of the increased use of fertility drugs, which tend to result in multiple births. Many of these babies spend their first days in the neonatal intensive care unit — the NICU, also the name and focus of a new television series that debuted last month on the Discovery Health Channel. According to the National Center for
Health Statistics, preterm birth rates rose by more than one-third from the early 1980s until 2006, when they hit 12.8 percent. In 2008, 12.3 per- cent of babies were born premature. The medical costs are staggering, more than $26 billion in 2005, according to a report by the March of Dimes, a leader in the effort to improve the health of babies. Because of advances in science and medicine, the chances of survival for preemies, even those born before 24 weeks, are better than ever, says Alan Fleischman, medical direc- tor for the March of Dimes. But many of these children suffer developmental and medical problems that can be tem-
’m sometimes surprised — even shocked — when Cameron and his brother, Matthew, now 14, shine on the gridiron, in the classroom or in other ordinary achievements. It’s
porary or life-long. This is the preemie prism through
which I’ve viewed my boys’ accomplish- ments. When I cheer at their football games, I do so not just because they make a key tackle but because, against scary odds, they can walk and run. When I applaud at their school con- certs, I do it not just because they perform beautifully, but because Cam- eron and Matthew are up there with the rest of the kids. And this month, when my sons go off to high school, I’m sure I will shed a few tears, not just because I’m proud they’ve reached this mile- stone, but because 14 years ago, I feared this time might not come.
stark contrast to the low temperatures and snow outside. As the doctor spread cold gel over my abdomen, I briefly turned away from the machine. “Please, Lord,” I whispered, “let this pregnancy be the real thing.” After a few minutes, my doctor blurt-
I 16 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | august 15, 2010
ed: “Mrs. Lumpkin, do you have twins in your family?” I thought about my cous- ins, Anthony and Shauna, now in their late 20s. “Yes,” I answered. “Why?” I lifted my upper body and turned to look at the machine. The nurse was smiling. “From what I’m seeing here, it looks
like you’ve got a set of twins,” the doc- tor said. Feeling a sudden mix of giddiness
and shock, I fell back on the table. Several months earlier, an ectopic preg- nancy had damaged one of my fallopian tubes, prompting my Greenbelt doc-
t was Jan. 11, four days into what became known as the Blizzard of 1996, and I was undergoing a sonogram. The warmth of my ob- stetrician’s Rockville office was a
tor to refer my husband and me to a Rockville practice that specialized in treating infertility. In late fall 1995, we visited the practice and learned about the options available, including oral drugs, hormone injections, in-vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemi- nation — all more than I wanted to try and more than we could afford. The doctor suggested we return in January to discuss the next step, but before our next appointment, I began experienc- ing abdominal cramping and bleeding, prompting my visit to the doctor. Now, I was seeing two fuzzy images on the sonogram machine. At first, my pregnancy seemed like a
dream, except for occasional morning sickness. Then, into my second trimes- ter, my doctors noticed that one of the twins, Baby A, was not growing at the rate of Baby B. I was referred to a per- inatologist at Georgetown University Hospital, who began tracking the babies’ sizes and urged me to take it easy. He was concerned about Baby A — “the runt,” he called him. If the size discrepancy con- tinued, he might have to put me on bed rest. I followed his orders. Then a 35-year-old reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers, I was cov-
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