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'Miracle' babies all grown up & living lives more remarkable than their birth
They're as small as dollar bills, as light as six sticks of butter: babies born at just 23 weeks and two pounds who seem far too fragile to live. "Nothing can prepare you for coming in and seeing your one and one half pound baby on a high frequency ventilator," said Dr. Ronald Hoekstra, a neonatologist at Minneapolis Children's Hospital. Just ask Ruth Kenefick, whose daughter, Katie, was so tiny at birth she wore her father's wedding ring as a bracelet. Doctors warned the Keneficks to expect the worst. "(I remember) all the what ifs," Ruth said. "What could have happened. What you may anticipate. They talked about setbacks. Be prepared for setbacks." But Katie instead has had success, a college honors student who grew from just 18 ounces to one of the tallest girls in her high school class. "It's always scary to hear the negative effects that can happen," said Katie. "But then to be so positive and successful, that's been awesome." For no one more than Hoekstra, who for 30 years has lead a team at Minneapolis Children's Hospital with one of the nation's best survival rates. Seeing some of his former so-called micro-preemies today for the first time in nearly two decades, Hoekstra's follow up studies find that while some babies do suffer lifelong problems, most do not. Half in his study are in college. "When I started seeing what was happening in their lives I was truly amazed," he said. One's a competitive figure skater. Another aced his SATs. All of their lives even more remarkable than the way they were born. "I'll never forget you," Hoekstra told them today. Doctors worry about micropreemies having problems with brain hemorraging and lung development, but those at Children's Hospital credit their success to aggressive treatment.
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