04/11/08 — When Mike and Jennifer Richwalsky were expecting their first child, they focused on such things as naming the baby and deciding on a color for the nursery.

It never occurred to them, Mike said, that they might have a premature baby who would spend weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Hamot Medical Center in Erie.

The care their son, Evan, got there six years ago is part of the reason Mike last year got involved in what was known as WalkAmerica and raised the most money of any individual in Crawford County.

“We just wanted to participate in the walk; it’s something important to me, to us,” he said.

Last year, when March of Dimes staffers called to thank him for raising so much money, he told them why the payback effort was so important to his family.

Their reaction was to ask the Meadville couple to be this year’s ambassador family for the newly-renamed March for Babies, the key fundraiser for March of Dimes, with money used for research, education and prevention of birth defects and of premature births.

This year, Jennifer joined in the fundraising and reached her goal of $500. Mike hopes to raise $1,500. He’s already past the $1,100 mark with a couple of weeks to go before March for Babies on April 27.

Recalling the days before Evan’s birth, Mike said the idea of a premature baby was mentioned in the prenatal class. But they never thought it would apply to them.

However, Jennifer developed preeclampsia, a condition which threatens the lives of the expectant mother and the unborn baby by affecting the organs and blood flow in both.

The doctors admitted Jennifer to the hospital on a Thursday in January 2002 in hopes that they could delay the imminent delivery — possibly for at least no earlier than St. Patrick’s Day. Complications continued and they hoped she could wait until Valentine’s Day.

The following Monday, Jan. 21, they told Mike to “go to work; nothing is going to happen today.”

However, when Mike called Jennifer from work at noon, he was told to get there immediately — they were taking Jennifer to the operating room to deliver the baby.

Born nine weeks before his due date, Evan weighed only 3 pounds. He spent 33 days in the Hamot neonatal unit where the staff used the latest technology to treat him.

“It was really scary. We were brand-new parents, not knowing what to expect,” Mike said.

But tiny Evan had the best of care, according to Mike, who has nothing but praise for the physicians and nurses at Hamot.

Among the treatment was a drug which had been developed to help strengthen the lungs of preemies.

The doctors told Mike that if Evan had been born in 1976 (the year Mike was born), the odds would have been against his surviving. Today, though, 95 percent of babies born with Evan’s condition survive.

Because Evan’s lungs weren’t strong, he was very frail. He developed some infections, including jaundice; had to be fed through a feeding tube; and was on oxygen to help him breathe.

Mike and Jennifer never got to hold their baby until he was a week old, and then it was with the assistance of two nurses who helped with keeping the various medical wires straight.

Before Evan could be released from the hospital, he had to pass a battery of tests, including being able to sit in a car seat for 10 minutes without setting off an alarm indicating he was having trouble breathing.

When they finally took Evan home, Mike and Jennifer looked at each other and said, “Now what?” But they learned quickly that although they had left the hospital, they weren’t without resources.

Some of the help came through the Early Intervention Program which made at-home visits to help Evan with developmental skills.

The couple moved to Meadville when Mike became assistant director of public affairs for Allegheny College, and they quickly learned that Crawford County has the same good health-care resources as Erie County does, he said.

Mike said Evan, now a kindergarten student at West End Elementary School, has worked very hard at speech and other therapy, and today it is hard to realize he once had developmental problems.

Jennifer had developed a Web site and they had a good response to that, Mike said. It received many words of encouragement from other families of premature babies.

Having a premature baby can be stressful, Mike said, and he and Jennifer went through some tough times.

One of the toughest decisions was whether to have another child because they had been told that once a woman has preeclampsia, it isn’t uncommon for it to develop in subsequent pregnancies

But they decided to try again and this time their baby, Grady, went full-term with none of the complications that Evan had. Grady will be 2 in June.

Grady and Evan will be walking with Mike and Jennifer in the March for Babies in Crawford County on April 27.

They’re looking forward to it because they know that because of the March of Dimes, “everything worked out for Evan; we had a happy ending,” Mike said.

They’re hoping to help give other families the same happy ending.



The Re-naming

The March of Dimes has renamed WalkAmerica, its largest fund-raising event, to March for Babies, a change that makes very clear why the community walks every year: for all babies.

“Because every baby is a celebration, March for Babies is a fun day to come out, enjoy a walk with many other local supporters, listen to music, have some refreshments, and participate in family-friendly activities,” says Jessica Armant, community director for the March of Dimes.

Not every baby is born healthy, though. In Crawford County, 9.2 percent of all births are preterm; the March of Dimes is trying to find out why. With everyone’s support, the March of Dimes is funding research to make more pregnancies go a full nine months.

Anyone interested in joining the March for Babies is asked to call Armant at 833-4941 for more information. Participants can also register and fundraise online at marchforbabies.org.

For the latest resources and information, visit marchofdimes.com or nacersano.org.



You can go

March for Babies — Sunday, April 27, at 1 p.m., at Crawford County Fairgrounds — expects to raise $30,000. This year’s presenting sponsor for Meadville’s March for Babies is Meadville OB/GYN Associates.