Published in The Post-Star (A1)
12/27/05
When John Lines II entered the world on April 20, 1995, his parents didn't know whether to grieve or rejoice.
Their newborn son was 15 weeks premature and weighed 1 pound, 12 ounces.
He was 11-1/2 inches long -- "just like a sheet of paper," said his mother, Meg Lines. He couldn't breathe or eat on his own, and was so tiny that his father's wedding band fit around the middle of his arm like a bracelet.
"People just didn't know what to say when it happened," Lines said. "Do you celebrate a birth like that?"
Lines wasn't expecting any complications when she became pregnant with her second child in 1994. She and her husband both came from large families and their 3-year-old, Emily, weighed over 9 pounds at birth.
Lines, a school speech therapist, was a healthy young woman who took prenatal vitamins and didn't smoke or drink.
"It can happen to anybody, that's what I found out," said Lines, 40, in a recent interview at her Queensbury home. Her son John, now 10 years old, cuddled up with her on the couch as they told their story.
Last year in the United States, more than half a million babies were born too soon, setting a new and disturbing record.
The preterm birth rate -- babies born before 37 complete weeks in the womb -- has risen 16 percent since 1990, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. By 2004, one in every eight live births was premature.
A variety of factors in a woman's health can raise the risk of premature birth, including genetics, obstetric history, infections, smoking or drug use. But sometimes, there's no easy cause to pinpoint.
"The largest chunk of cases are idiopathic, meaning, it just happens," said Dr. Mary Nevins, director of newborn services at Glens Falls Hospital.
Fertility treatments are also a major catalyst of premature delivery, she said. As women continue the trend of having babies later in life, the use of such treatments is on the rise, which increases the number of multiple births (twins, triplets or more). In more than half of cases, multiples are born prematurely.
"Of the factors that are known (to cause prematurity), fertility treatments are number one," said Nevins. "But of course, you wouldn't choose to get rid of fertility treatments ... so it could be hard to bring the premature birth rate down in the long run."
In Washington, Warren, and Saratoga counties, the average preterm birth rate is about 10 percent of live births. That's lower than state and national averages, although the lack of any local neonatal intensive care units means that many high-risk pregnancies are transferred to Albany Medical Center.
Nevins said she hasn't seen any statistics about the rate at a local level, but she does see one indicator that it may be increasing.
"We have a vaccine called Synagis to protect against RDS, a respiratory virus which premature babies are more at risk for," she said. "And our number of babies receiving Synagis has definitely risen in the last five years."
Newborns who arrive at 34 weeks or less at Glens Falls Hospital are usually brought to Albany Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit, or their mothers are transferred before delivery, Nevins said. Saratoga Hospital follows a similar procedure.
In the Lines' case, Meg spent the last month of her pregnancy in the hospital -- Glens Falls for a week, then Albany -- as doctors struggled to keep her alive with a series of 13 blood transfusions. She had developed a condition called placenta abruption, which means that the placenta was tearing away from the wall of uterus, causing her to bleed heavily. The placenta was also lying lower than normal, tricking her body into entering labor early.
Her doctors' goal was to help her reach 28 weeks gestation, but she only made it to 25.
The emotions she experienced were "a roller coaster," she said. She describes it as a kind of grieving process.
"It's such an all-consuming experience, and it's life-changing. Having been through it, I look at things differently. You appreciate the little things," she said, her voice choking up. "Like riding a bike, writing his name, or when he learned to read."
The Lines are now an "ambassador family" for the March of Dimes, a non-profit organization focused on improving babies' health. Each spring, the family leads a team in the Walk America fund-raiser for prematurity research and treatment. Meg is also on the board of directors for the local March of Dimes chapter.
Emotional support is often crucial for parents of premature infants, she said, and it wasn't always easy to find when she was in the hospital.
"When I was there, you made up your own support by connecting with other parents," said Lines. "Somehow it helps to get together with other people in similar situations, even if you don't talk."
She's excited about the NICU Family Support Program, which the March of Dimes recently started to provide on-site counseling and therapy for parents with babies in neonatal intensive care units. Albany Medical Center was one of the first hospitals in the nation to join the program about two years ago.
Lines sometimes sits in on the program's group scrap-booking sessions, and shares her story with other families coping with a premature birth.
"Everybody's story is different, the outcomes are different, but the emotions are so similar," she said. "I keep hearing the same common descriptives, like 'roller coaster ride.'"
The first few months of John's life were full of gains and setbacks, but in the end, the gains prevailed. He weighed more than 5 pounds by the time he came home from the hospital in August 1995. In early childhood, he overcame serious asthma and an eye problem called retinopathy, which are common complications of prematurity.
Today, John Lines is a healthy 10-year-old, although there's still a sense of fragility in his angular face and 65-pound, 4-foot, 11-inch frame. He is in fourth grade at Queensbury Elementary School, and he said his favorite activities are drawing and photography.
He shares his father's name, although his mother is adamant about how people use it.
"He's John C. Lines II," she said, giving her son a sideways hug. "He's no Junior."
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