WHY WE WALK: TEAM CALLUM'S STORY

We struggled for years to get pregnant and suffered several miscarriages.  In March 2010 I became pregnant for the 6th time.  Things started off very rocky and the pregnancy was labeled 'complicated.'  I was monitored closely and by 21 weeks things seemed to be looking better.  In early August we were away on vacation in New Hampshire with family.  On August 6, 2010, when I was 25 weeks pregnant, I woke up and realized that I was having contractions every 15 minutes.  I called my OB's office and they told me to get to labor and delivery triage as soon as possible.  We made it from New Hampshire into Boston's Beth Israel hospital by 11am.  I was already fully dilated.  Our son Callum was born at 1:23p.m. by emergency c-section (he was breech).  He didn't cry, at least not that we could hear.  It was the most agonizing five minutes as we waited to find out what was happening on the other side of the sheet.  We didn't know if he was alive or not.  Finally the neonatologist came over to us and told us that he was alive and intubated and that he tried to cry when he first came out.  She brought him over to see us briefly before whisking him away to the NICU.  I remember thinking that I had never seen anything so tiny or so pink before.  Callum weighed 1 pound 9 ounces and was only 13 inches long.  He began his 4 month NICU journey that day. 

Callum's first few weeks in the NICU were tenuous at best.  He required a lot of respiratory support and twice he dropped his blood pressure so low that it wouldn't register on a blood pressure cuff.  We were called to the hospital in the early hours of the morning and we were afraid that we were going to lose our baby that we fought so hard for.  Somehow he made it through those first difficult few weeks.  When he was 6 weeks old we got another middle of the night phone call- he was having some spells, which was unlike him and a CBC showed a shift indicative of infection.  He ended up having pneumonia.  Fortunately he responded well to the antibiotics.  Finally, after 8 weeks on the ventilator, Callum graduated to CPAP.  Things were going pretty well for a couple of weeks.  Then in mid October, Callum was diagnosed with aggressive retinopathy of prematurity.  He needed laser surgery on both eyes.  We were given a 75% chance that the surgery would save his central vision at the expense of his peripheral vision and a 25% chance of a 'bad outcome' which could lead to blindness.  We had to wait two weeks to find out if the surgery was successful.  It was a long wait, but fortunately the surgery worked.  After that, things went along fairly smoothly.  Callum eventually progressed to a high flow nasal cannula, and then to a regular low flow nasal cannula.  Just before Thanksgiving Callum was transferred to Children's Hospital for bilateral hernia repair surgery.  It was a long day, but he was back in Beth Israel NICU by dinnertime with the amazing staff who knew and loved him.  We returned to cheers of "Welcome back, Callum!"  He was the oldest baby on the unit at that point.  A little over a week later, on December 2, after 118 grueling days in the NICU, Callum came home.  As a result of his chronic lung disease, he still requires oxygen support at home, but we are hopeful that he will be oxygen free by springtime. 

It is because of this boy, our tiny miracle son, and also because of the amazing care that he received, that we got involved with the March of Dimes.  Without the medical advances made possible by funding from the March of Dimes, we know without a doubt that Callum would not be alive today.  We are forever grateful that his survival was made possible.  Other families are not so lucky.  We will walk in the March for Babies this year, and every year from now on, for Callum and for all the other tiny fighters who are born too small, too sick, or too early.  Every baby deserves a chance to grow up and we believe the March of Dimes is committed to making that happen.

Beautiful Callum now