By Elizabeth Cloutman
 Photo by Joan Mosher/ Special to the Town Crier |
Kyle Harrison, now an active toddler, was born two months premature
This will be Kyle Harrison’s second Thanksgiving. At 14 months, Kyle is a chubby, happy boy with bright blue eyes, wispy blond hair and an independent streak. He’s constantly on the move, tossing balls, waving goodbye, playing with a toy Mickey Mouse and squealing with delight. In other words, Kyle is a typical toddler, one of 4,400 babies born at El Camino Hospital last year.
In truth, Kyle’s proud grandparents Bill and Betty Mehew, Los Altos residents since 1952, call their 16th grandchild “our miracle baby.” So do Kyle’s parents, Terry Friedman and Ken Harrison of Santa Clara.
Kyle was the much-wanted child of parents in their 40s, who had been married just four years. Kyle was due to be born in late November last year, between his mother’s 41st birthday, Nov. 21, and Thanksgiving. “Kyle was going to be a birthday present,” Friedman said. He was the last baby due to be born in his parents’ childbirth coaching class of 15 couples.
Instead, he was the first baby born. Kyle arrived almost exactly two months early on Sept. 26, weighing three-and-three-quarter pounds. He was one of 150 premature babies who spent their first weeks of life in El Camino’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit - NICU or “Nick-you” as it’s known to the six neonatologists and 50 registered nurses who work there. At 28 weeks gestation, Kyle was too small to breathe on his own, hold a steady body temperature, or suck and swallow.
Kyle was placed in a small, heated isolette, placed on a respirator and fed intravenous fluids for his first two weeks. He spent another two weeks being fed breast milk through a tiny nasogastric tube. His parents had to wash their hands carefully before visiting and weren’t even able to touch him his first two days of life because his immature nervous system was so easily stressed. It was a week or more before his parents could hold him for the first time. Because Kyle was on a respirator, they couldn’t even hear him cry for two weeks. It was a little cry. “He sounds like a little sheep,” Harrison told his wife.
El Camino neonatologists told Kyle’s parents to take things one day at a time, that he might take some steps forward and then a few steps back. Kyle kept going forward. “He developed really well,” Friedman said. “He never took those backward steps. We were so blessed.”
Friedman visited Kyle three times a day to hold and feed him, often accompanied by her husband. “We called it Camp El Camino,” Harrison said.
“It was our home away from home,” Friedman added. “The neonatologists, nurses and staff were always nurturing, professional and so caring.”
In just a month, Kyle was able to go home. “Babies are so resilient,” said Sarah Perez, the clinical manager of the NICU and newborn nursery unit since 1996, and a registered nurse for the past 30 years. “It’s always rewarding for me to see a premature baby go home. You see them when they’re so small and helpless, then they grow and soon they’re out of the isolette. We see parents for months. We know them very well. Nurses get quite attached to the parents and the parents to the nurses. Parents come back to visit and send pictures to show how he or she has grown.”
El Camino built the NICU in 1993, Perez said. The 16-bed unit cared for about 500 newborns last year, many full-term infants with respiratory distress or infections, as well as the 150 born prematurely.
A baby is considered premature if born before 37 weeks gestation. Most “preemies” are born between 24-32 weeks, neonatologist Ashima Madan said. One of the smallest was about one-and-a-half pounds and also survived.
Extremely premature babies requiring oscillators- high-frequency ventilators - and newborns needing cardiac or other surgeries are sent to the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, but eventually return to El Camino when possible. “We want to keep our babies in the community. If babies are transferred to Stanford, we try to have them come back. It’s a hard commute (to Palo Alto) for parents, but they do it because they have to.”
Due date and target weight aren’t the criteria as to when an infant is able to go home with its parents, Perez explained. Instead, physicians and nurses have three goals a “preemie” must meet: The baby must be able to coordinate breathing, sucking and swallowing; control his or her own body temperature; and continue to gain weight. “Some (’preemies’) do so quickly; others take longer,” Perez said.
The toughest part of the job for Perez and the others who work in the NICU is when it’s clear a baby won’t survive. “Most babies get better,” Madan said.
“The rest that don’t make it were born so early or were so sick, it just wasn’t meant to be.” Perez said when tough medical decisions have to be made, physicians, nurses and parents confer together.
One of the more typical complications that can occur in premature children after leaving El Camino are respiratory problems due to lung damage that can sometimes occur because the child has, by necessity, been on a respirator for an extended period of time. A second complication is developmental delay. “Preemie” parents learn CPR, although it’s rarely needed.
A child’s pediatrician and hospital social worker instruct parents what to expect in the way of developmental benchmarks.
When medication failed to stop Friedman’s premature labor, she said she wasn’t concerned about complications or delays. “It was meant to be,” Friedman said. “God said this is it, so this is it.”
She said she felt her training and years of experience as a counselor - helping the disabled find jobs through Project HIRE and later working with families of cancer patients for the American Cancer Society - may have helped her stay calm those first two months of Kyle’s life.
As it turned out, Kyle was never sick his first year of life. While he’s not yet walking on his own, he crawls at a furious pace and takes steps while holding onto the living room couch. He’s alert, friendly and curious.
Kyle’s second Halloween was spent at a party for the NICU “2000 graduates,” Friedman said. El Camino, along with corporate sponsors, holds this party annually.
There was cake and the “graduates” wore costumes.
Kyle’s first Thanksgiving at age two months was spent quietly at home with his parents upon his pediatrician’s advice, so he wouldn’t risk infection.
This Thanksgiving, Kyle, his parents, grandparents and other relatives will attend a family reunion at his uncle’s house in Grass Valley.
“We’re blessed and so grateful,” Friedman said.
