For 'Miracle Baby,' Life at 11 Is Happily Ordinary

Read this story before considering an abortion

N.Va. Girl Set Record in 1993 as Smallest Infant Born at Fairfax Hospital to Survive
(washingtonpost.com)

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page C07

There is the storybook version of birth: Dad rushes Mom to the hospital. Mom endures a few hours of painful labor. Mom and Dad are rewarded with a plump, healthy baby.

That is not Sara Peters's story. As the 11-year-old will tell you, her birth was far more fantastic.

A Peters family scrapbook includes photographs of Sara fighting for her life at Inova Fairfax Hospital. She weighed just 15 ounces at birth and was so tiny that two 3-by-3-inch squares of gauze served as her diapers.

"I weighed 15 ounces, I was 11 inches long, I had a 2 percent -- 2 percent?" Sara said on a recent afternoon, turning to her mother, Tracy, as the two sat on a plaid couch in their home in Prince William County.

"Two percent chance of living? One percent? I don't remember," Tracy Peters, 39, said. "It was pretty slim."

So slim that Sara became what is known in neonatal units as a "miracle baby." Born July 9, 1993, and weighing less than a can of soup, she set a record at Inova Fairfax Hospital: She was the smallest baby to be born there and survive. Her birth was induced at 25 weeks because her mother's life was in danger from a complication of pregnancy.

Take a look at Sara now, and that's hard to fathom. She is a wry, freckle-faced sixth-grader who wears Nike sneakers, loves math and history and teases her 7-year-old brother, Brett.

And amazingly, despite all the warnings whispered by doctors as her fragile body grew for four months in the hospital's neonatal unit -- that she might develop cerebral palsy or lose her hearing or sight -- Sara is perfectly fine.

"She dances twice a week. She's an A and B student" at Marsteller Middle School in Bristow, said Tracy Peters, a financial analyst for NV Homes. "It's as boring as it sounds, when you start off the way she did. She's just a normal 11 1/2-year-old -- which was the plan."

Sara also knows that she was a twin and that her sibling died in utero 10 weeks before she was born. By 25 weeks -- 15 weeks short of a full-term pregnancy -- Tracy Peters had developed a complication that affected her body's ability to clot blood. Doctors told Tracy and Mark Peters, 47, now a salesman for Mid-Atlantic Printers, that she would die if she did not deliver.

So Sara arrived, and she was tiny. The other day, she flipped through a photo album that chronicles her hospital stay and pointed out the details that came to measure her minuteness -- the two 3-by-3-inch patches of gauze that served as her diapers; her mother's size 4 engagement ring, which Sara could wear on her arm even after 29 days of life. Upstairs in Sara's blue-walled bedroom, a framed photo shows someone holding a telephone receiver next to baby Sara. It is almost as long as she is.

While she was in the hospital and hooked up to a labyrinth of tubes, more than two dozen nurses and doctors cared for her. They placed colorful signs on her incubator to mark each milestone of her growth: 700 grams, 800 grams.

At 65 pounds, Sara today is petite among her friends but nothing out of the ordinary. She has told some of them the story of her beginnings, and they, like she, think it's "cool." And though she cannot articulate just why, Sara said she strongly believes she still is lucky.

Doctors would agree. Robert Beck, a neonatologist at Inova Fairfax who treated Sara, said she had about a 50 percent chance of developing long-term problems. Except for a hernia, which is commonly seen in children born prematurely, Sara has had none.

Since Sara's birth, dozens of babies her size and at least one weighing about 13 ounces have been born and survived at Inova Fairfax, Beck said. Preemies' chances at life have jumped for many reasons, he said, including the introduction of a chemical therapy that helps them breathe. Collaboratives of neonatal intensive care units, such as the Vermont Oxford Network, have also been established to share statistics and best practices, Beck said.

Continued at:
For 'Miracle Baby,' Life at 11 Is Happily Ordinary (washingtonpost.com)