He's a Miracle

              EARL ROSS Craft Jr. is 6 months old, but he
weighs only 7 pounds, 14 ounces.
However, the fact that he is alive and getting strong-er
at all is a miracle'** modern medicine. Had he been
born only a few years ago, Ross would not have
survived. J J
His 20-year-old parents, Earl and Sheryl Craft of
Princeton, talked recently about Ross's premature
birth and their experiences.
Twenty-nine weeks into her pregnancy, Mrs. Craft
was rushed to LSU Medical Center at 6 a.m. At 10:55
a.m., Ross was delivered by Caesarean section. Tox-emia
had caused the placenta to separate from the
womb prematurely. Both the lives of Sheryl and her
baby were in danger.
Ross weighed 2 pounds, 7 ounces at birth, but later
dropped to 2 pounds even.
"At first I was afraid of losing both of them, then I
was afraid of losing her, then him," Craft remembered.
"You're happy you have a live baby boy you've waited
for, and then you're scared you might lose your wife
and might lose your son too."
Once Mrs. Craft was out of danger, Craft was eager
to see his son, but his wife was apprehensive.
"I didn't want to see him after they told me how
small and sick he was," she said. "I had it in my mind
he was going to die, so I didn't want to see him."
Three days later, Craft forced his wife to go to the
neonatal intensive care unit to see their son.
"When I first saw him, I was shocked," she said.
Craft was quick to take up for his wife, though.
"She was thrown into a situation where she didn't
know what was going on in her body, she'd had a C-sec-tion,
and then you see this small piece of flesh...." he
said. "You've seen other fat juicy babies and they're
(premature babies) not what you've expected."
"He had all these tubes on him. You don't want to see
that on your baby," Mrs. Craft said.
She soon got over her apprehension, though.
"The sad thing is a lot of parents don't want them
after they see them," she said.
Going home a week later without Ross was difficult.
"When we left the hospital, it was almost like we lost
the baby," Mrs. Craft said.
The Crafts said they have almost lost their baby sev-eral
times since then, but the NICU doctors, nurses and
technologists have managed to save him each time
through such means as surgery and medication. And
even though the Crafts hope to be able to bring their son
home within a few weeks, he is not out of danger yet.
Because his lungs were not fully developed before his
birth, Ross will still need to be administered oxygen
once he is at home. He'll also be especially susceptible
to respiratory ailments, so visitors will have to be ex-tremely
limited. For Ross, a cold could be fatal, Craft
said.
But Ross is lucky. In spite of his premature birth and
all of his problems, as far as the Crafts know now, he
is not brain damaged. If he can make it to 3 years old,
he has a good chance of living a normal life.
The Crafts are looking forward to the time they can
have their son home with them, in spite of the constant
attention he will require.
"I want to do it," Mrs. Craft said. "I'm not afraid of
the responsibility, but I'm afraid something might hap-pen
once he comes home."
And although the couple and their baby have already
been through a lot of pain and likely have more ahead,
the Crafts say they have never thought that it would
have been better if Ross had not survived.
"Ross was sick, but I don't care how sick he is, you
can't give up on him," Mrs. Craft said.
"A child, no matter what age, is still a child," Craft
said. "Until the time God says that child should die, the
child should live."
He's a miracle
Preemie Earl Ross Craft Jr. lives due
to advances made in modern medicine
Stories by KATHIE COFFEY
Photos by BILLY UPSHAW
LSUMC: The
fight for life
goes on here
Tiny wrinkled babies with limbs no bigger than a
man's finger lie in beds all around LSU Medical
Center's neonatal intensive care unit. Some are at-tached
to machines that, help them breathe. Monitors
show breathing patterns, heart rate and blood pressure.
Brightly colored stuffed toys sit in bed corners.
"We treat them like babies, not as things," said Dr.
Arun Pramanik, as pink-gowned physicians, nurses and
other health care professionals made their way be-tween
the beds checking on their little patients.
According to Pramanik, associate professor of pedi-atrics,
and chief, section of neonatology, the smallest
baby the medical center has been able to save weighed -
1 pound, 2 ounces, at birth.
At LSUMC, Pramanik said babies who weigh be-tween
1 pound and 1 pound 10 ounces at birth have be-tween
a 25 and 40 percent chance of surviving. Ten
years ago — and in some places today — babies that
small would not have had a chance, he said.
Credit for the steps taken in neonatal care go to both
advancing medical knowledge and technology.
Pramanik said the No. 1 problem premature babies
face is breathing. Because their lungs are not fully de-veloped
at birth, they may have to be placed on ven-tilators.
However, Pramanik said it is essential to give
the baby just the right amount of oxygen to avoid lung
damage and prevent blindness. As a precautionary
measure, a special machine continuously monitors ox-ygen
and carbon dioxide in the baby.
Pramanik said a drug that may help mature a baby's
lungs is being researched.
Another problem common to very small premature
babies involves the failure of a heart vessel called the
ductus arteriosus to close. If the vessel remains open
after birth, the lungs could become flooded with blood.
Should medication not correct the problem, surgery
could be necessary. In good hands, Pramanik said, the
surgery takes only about 15 minutes.
Sometimes the premature baby will suffer bleeding
in the brain, perhaps caused by the stress of labor,
Pramanik said. After birth, ultrasound tests are taken
and if any bleeding is noticed the baby is monitored
carefully. Excessive bleeding could compress and
damage the brain. Pramanik said the baby could re-quire
very delicate surgery to stop the bleeding.
The baby may also face problems because of im-mature
kidneys and liver. Pramanik said the liver
could produce a chemical that causes brain damage. An
exchange transfusion may be necessary to get rid of it.
Treating the NICU babies is complicated, though, by
their very size. Pramanik said miniature IV pumps de-liver
microdrops instead of drops, blood tests are done
in microsamples, and medications are administered in
reduced dosages.
Pramanik stressed the need for team work in suc-cessful
neonatal care. While physicians, nurses, respir-atory
therapists, and other health care professionals
work with the infants, medical social workers counsel
parents.
He said parents of premature babies should realize
that their child may not function at its chronological
age.
Sheryl and Earl Craft (left) hold
their 6-month-old son Ross.
The tiny hand of Earl Ross Craft Jr.
(left) is dwarfed by his parent's.
Ross was born nearly three months
premature.