Lebanon
“The midwife was like ‘you’re having this baby right now,’ ” Leonard recalled.
She was in labor, much too early, but too far along to stop. Despite the fact that she was more than two months early, Leonard’s baby was tolerating labor well and Leonard was able to deliver her without an emergency cesarean section. Still, doctors tried to prepare her for what it would be like to have a premature infant, even as they led her to the delivery room.
“They told me to be prepared to see my baby resuscitated in front of me,” Leonard said. “That sentence definitely jolted me into the fact that this is going to be serious.”
Her daughter, Kendall, was born weighing four pounds. In many ways, Leonard was lucky. The baby was a full pound heavier than doctors expected, which made her six-week stay in the intensive care nursery relatively smooth. Leonard lived just 20 minutes from the hospital, so she was able to visit frequently, and her employer, Von Bargen’s Jewelry in Hanover, told her to take as long as she needed without worrying about work. Many families with premature infants face medical setbacks, long commutes and job loss.
Still, the experience of having a premature baby was gut-wrenching. In the intensive-care nursery, Leonard learned how to be a parent with very little privacy, constantly exposed to other families, sometimes as they received heartbreaking news. At home, she needed to pump milk every two hours around the clock, even though her baby was not with her.
“All of that was so intense in terms of being physically separated from a newborn,” Leonard said.
Sadly, Leonard’s experience is not uncommon. One in 10 infants in the United States is born premature, and premature birth is the biggest cause of infant mortality in this country and around the world. Babies who live face a host of lifelong medical complications.
These are all things that the March of Dimes is trying to change. The organization raises money to fund research aimed at reducing premature births and improving outcomes for babies who are born too early. On Saturday, May 12, the March of Dimes will host a March for Babies at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. The three-mile walk aims to raise $10,000, while fostering hope, celebrating success and remembering infants who did not survive their premature births.
In addition to the walk, there will be family activities including a face painter, superhero characters, craft kits and coloring sheets. Leonard will be attending with Kendall, who is now a healthy 6-year-old, and her son Andrew, 3, whose life was likely saved by March of Dimes research.
When she was pregnant with Andrew, Leonard was understandably concerned about another premature birth. This time, complications started even earlier: when Leonard was 25 weeks pregnant and the baby would have only a 50 percent chance of survival. In order to prevent labor, Leonard was hospitalized on complete bed rest with her head lower than the rest of her body. She stayed that way for 66 days, until doctors discharged her at 34 weeks. Two days before his due date Andrew came into the world in a rush, born in an ambulance beneath the ‘Welcome to Hartland’ sign.
Today, when Leonard looks at her family she is incredibly thankful for research funded by the March of Dimes and for the support of the staff at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
“There’s not a moment that passes through my house that I don’t say to myself ‘we almost didn’t have this,’ ” she said. “The March of Dimes is really at the forefront of this issue from research to prevention to treatment and wellbeing.”
Each year Leonard leads a team of fundraisers for the March for Babies and Von Bargen’s Jewelry has become a corporate sponsor of the event in her honor.
“I feel a gratitude to the March of Dimes and the Dartmouth team,” Leonard said. “I stay involved and do what I can because I believe my family is a gift from them.”
Editor’s note: The walk begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 12. For more information on the March of Dimes and forming a fundraising team, visit www.marchforbabies.org/event/lebanon.