Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 9, 1995 TAG: 9505090068
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
DAREIOUS LaGree Benefield sleeps against Grandma's chest, one fist clenching her blouse. His still-thin arms reach upward at the sound of a windup toy. A gift from Grandpa, it plays "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window?"
When LaGree was born on Dec. 13, his ears were still flat against his head; his body was shapeless, like a tube. His arms were so small that his father's onyx ring made an elbow-high bracelet for him.
At least three times in the 41/2 months LaGree stayed in the hospital, doctors encouraged his family to let nature take its course, to not use extraordinary efforts to keep the baby alive.
To let him die.
"The doctor kept saying, 'Each day of his life is a honeymoon because he should have died yesterday,'" recalls his 24-year-old mother, Angela Benefield.
When LaGree was born after 23 weeks' gestation and weighing just over a pound, Angela said, doctors asked whether she wanted to try to save him, or just to hold him and "let him go." Try to save him, she told them.
At a later point, doctors said circumstances had become so grim that the infant ought to be allowed to die. Angela declined their advice. Still later, they explained that the oxygen being pumped into his immature lungs was destroying them and maybe she should consider disconnecting the life support.
That time, Angela told the doctors, OK, quit fighting for him. But when she was given LaGree to hold, she decided she couldn't give him up.
LaGree was Angela Benefield's triumph.
The first time she got pregnant, nine years ago, she carried the baby almost 20 weeks. It lived about an hour after birth. She named her Lourinda.
In February 1994, Robert was born dead after 181/2 weeks inside her womb. Between Lourinda and Robert were four or five other pregnancies, most so short-lived that Angela's only memory of them is when they ended.
Angela has what is called an incompetent cervix, which means it doesn't support a developing fetus inside the womb. In an attempt to prevent another premature delivery, doctors surgically secured the mouth of her womb when Angela learned she was pregnant last August.
Twenty-three weeks into the pregnancy, Angela began having labor contractions. For two or three days she was back and forth to the hospital so doctors could get her labor stopped to buy time for the baby to develop enough to survive at birth.
On Dec. 13, they couldn't hold back the delivery any longer.
"I clamped my legs tight," Angela recalls. "I didn't want to lose him."
LaGree, delivered at 1 pound, five-tenths of an ounce, now weighs 5 pounds, 4 ounces. When he came home April 27, he tolerated having his handprint made in cake icing and then tried to suck the sweet, gluey stuff off his fingers.
"Angela'd been trying to have me a grandbaby for nine years," Grandma Lucille Hewitt said. "Every time she got pregnant and lost it, she'd go deeper into a mind of her own. She couldn't stand to lose another."
The bill to Medicaid for LeGree's treatment at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley, $246,000, attests to the intensity of the battle to save his life. The doctors who fought to save him, however, declined to be interviewed. Instead, they issued a brief statement that said:
"Following intensive consultation, the family chose aggressive support be given to LaGree. They were advised intensive support might be futile, and should the baby survive, there was high risk for mental and physical impairment.
"We wish the Benefield family well and will follow with interest the development and growth of this baby."
In 1993 and 1994, Community's doctors cared for 100 babies in LaGree's category of "extreme preemie," babies of less than 27 weeks' gestation. Of that 100, the average weight at birth was 1 pound, 11 ounces, and the average length of stay in the hospital was 55 days. Thirty-eight of the 100 died.
How LaGree will develop - what his quality of life will be like - is of course unknown. He has cleared a number of hurdles, though. At six weeks, he had emergency surgery to repair a hole in his stomach. Eight days before he came home, he had surgery for hernias.
The family has been told that he may have chronic lung disease. That he could have cerebral palsy. That his eyesight might be affected. (Angela said the retinas that were starting to detach appear to be correcting themselves.)
And sometimes LaGree fails to breathe, which is why he's on a monitor.
The precariousness of LaGree's situation was made evident the day he came home, and Grandpa Sam Butler got to hold him for the first time.
LaGree is still hooked to an oxygen tank and a heart monitor, which will announce if something isn't right. As Butler got his first touch of the infant, a photographer's flash charger beeped and Butler thought it was one of the monitors.
"You got me scared to death, boy," he said.
"Don't worry, the monitor screams," Angela reminded Butler.
The family encircling LaGree includes Grandma Hewitt, mother of her own six grown children; her friend, Butler; her former sister-in-law, Betty Short, who has lived with the family for 26 years; and LaGree's dad, Joe Burwell Jr.
Hewitt, a former North Carolina textile worker now on disability, rules the household and has assumed command of LaGree's care. She read to the infant in the hospital even before she was allowed to hold him. All along, she insisted that every effort be made to save the baby.
Hewitt was LaGree's most faithful visitor during the four months he stayed in neonatal intensive care and later in other special care units.
One week when LaGree was very, very sick, Angela didn't go to see him.
"I just couldn't," she said.
Angela is certified as a nursing assistant. She was comfortable around the technology that kept her baby alive, but sometimes watching LaGree struggle to survive was too much, she said.
Home was only a couple of miles from the hospital, however, so family members were in and out regularly, even at all hours of the night. They called the nurses a lot, too, to check on the baby.
By Feb. 27, LaGree's weight was up to 2 pounds, 4/10th ounce; a month later it was 3 pounds, 3 ounces.
LaGree got his first bottle of milk on March 20, and began to gain weight more rapidly.
LaGree's father helped keep watch over his son. He'd come after work at a Wendy's restaurant in northwest Roanoke. He also took off three days so he and Angela could prepare to bring LaGree home. With a baby in the hospital, the recent months had been hard, Joe said. But he and Angela said the experience has made them better parents because they're more knowledgeable about handling infants than most new parents.
Before they could bring LaGree home, Joe and Angela had to receive instruction on connecting the oxygen and heart monitor and on giving CPR. They also had to spend at least one night in a room with LaGree before he was released.
The night the parents stayed with LaGree at the hospital, neither slept much. Joe spent some of the night making videos of his son. He also talked about the night LaGree was born. Joe remembered the birth happened quickly, and everyone expected the worst. Then he looked down at the baby and began shouting, "He's moving! He's moving!"
Because Angela and her mother "fight over" who's going to hold LaGree, Joe said he mostly is a bystander. He knows how to care for Lagree, although he is reluctant to deal with a dirty diaper.
"I just want to get him home to read to him," Joe said their last night in the hospital. He said he'd bought "Pinnochio," "Goofy's Big Race," and "The Emperor's New Clothes" to read to his son.
Joe took high school art classes and likes to sketch. The two Teddy bear drawings on the wall above LaGree's cradle at home are his.
"We're also going fishing," Joe said.
Despite all the months the family had spent with LaGree while he was hospitalized, Angela said she didn't really feel like he was hers until she signed the release papers to take him home.
And the day after he came home, he went back to the hospital because his breathing monitor alert went off.
Grandma Hewitt admits that she was the reason for the hospital trip; the screaming monitor frightened her. LaGree was hospitalized overnight and his blood oxygen levels were checked, but the family was told that what happened was routine in his case.
"The next time it happens, I'll just check him and check the machine and not be scared," Lucille said.
For Angela, coming home has meant returning to a more normal routine of work also at Wendy's and time with Joe. Also, she sleeps better. She said she used to dream about the babies she'd lost.
"I don't dream about the other ones anymore," she said.
by CNB