Published: September 25, 2008 11:17 pm      

Second chance

Ambassador Family survivors, thanks to March of Dimes

Chandler Wolford, 7, recently got his first A on a spelling test.

The busy first-grader at Cranberry-Prosperity Elementary School got his best shot at life from the March of Dimes.

Born 11 weeks prematurely, Chandler was not the only one in jeopardy. His mom, Angela Wolford, was bleeding internally from an abrupted placenta and was also experiencing pre-eclampsia.

“If it had not been for the research done by the March of Dimes, Chandler and I might not have made it,” Wolford said. “It was pretty scary.”

At birth, Chandler weighed in at 2.5 pounds.

“He was in one of those enclosed plastic beds. We couldn’t touch him. I didn’t get to hold him until he was 16 days old. Even then, I could only hold him up close to my chest for about 20 minutes a day,” she said.

Nursing her baby wasn’t an option.

“Nursing is too strenuous for a preemie and burns too many calories, so Chandler was fed through a naso-gastric tube. It’s hard to be there and know you can’t do the most basic thing for your child because he’s too fragile,” Wolford said.

The lungs of a premature infant are under-developed and cannot produce enough surfactant to allow them to breathe on their own.

Surfactant is a chemical that prevents the air sacs in a baby’s lungs from collapsing during the breathing process. Synthetic surfactant, developed through the research done by the March of Dimes, is passed through a breathing tube into the baby’s lungs. This allows infants to breathe on their own much sooner than in the past, and they sustain less lung damage because they don’t need long-term ventilator use.

Chandler was given surfactant and remained on a ventilator for 13 days.

There were heart scans, lung scans and blood tests to monitor Chandler’s progress. At 40 days old, he received a blood transfusion and got to nurse his first bottle.

“It was 53 days before we saw him without any tubes in him,” Wolford said. “You imagine you’re going to have this healthy, plump baby and take him home right away, but we didn’t get to do that.”

At 56 days old, however, Chandler went home. He wore a monitor to alert Wolford and her husband, Tim of any problems.

At 8 weeks, Chandler weighed a whopping 4 pounds, 1 ounce.

For a year, he had to be monitored regularly for possible side effects of the treatments.

Some interventions, such as speech therapy — which Chandler finished a couple of weeks ago — helped him catch up quickly to the appropriate development stage.

“He still walks on his toes, and we’re working with him on that, but he has done wonderfully well. We feel very blessed and very grateful for all the strides the March of Dimes has made in helping families like ours,” Wolford said.

The Wolfords are one of three Ambassador families who will be on hand Oct. 21 for the annual Signature Chef’s Auction, which raises money for the March of Dimes.

“This is a great event, and it’s such a good cause,” Wolford said. “We hope the community will come out and support the auction. The money raised in this event can literally mean life or death for mothers and children.”

— E-mail:

bdavis@register-herald.com