A nice story that began too soon

Sometimes, if it's been a particularly rough day in the neonatal intensive care unit, Mercy San Juan Medical Center nurse Brie Simmons will pull aside a distraught parent of a premature infant with whom she feels a certain connection.

Perhaps it will be a young mother, a teenager, standing alone because the baby's father is "out of the picture," as they say. Perhaps the mother wears a stricken look, just this side of terrified, as she gazes on her tiny child enmeshed in tubes inside an incubator.

At those times, Simmons will share a story – one suffused with hope and optimism, and featuring a decidedly happy ending.

It concerns a scared 17-year-old girl who, on Nov. 15, 1991, gave birth at 28 weeks' gestation – more than two months pre-term. It's about the infant girl, born at 2 pounds, 2 ounces, who spent nine weeks in the NICU and almost didn't make it, who, at one year, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and who figured to measure out her childhood days in doctors' offices and physical therapy sessions.

It's about the mother, who not only returned to finish high school while tending to her special-needs daughter, but also graduated from nursing school at California State University, Sacramento, and for the past 12 years has been employed at the very same intensive-care unit where her daughter was treated.

And it's about this same girl, now 17 herself, who is a straight-A student and involved in student government at Franklin High School in Elk Grove, an officer with the local chapter of the Future Farmers of America and – astonishingly, given her physical challenges – a champion equestrian in dressage.

Quite a story that Brie and daughter Ashleigh Simmons have to tell.

"I don't tell everybody," Brie Simmons says, "but there are some parents who I can tell right off the bat that they need something to hold onto."

Dr. Robert Kahle, who founded the NICU at Mercy San Juan 20 years ago, says advanced technology and increased care have enabled more premature babies to live – and live well – despite the known increased risks of health problems that preemies face.

In fact, Mercy San Juan ranks in the top 3 percent nationwide in survival rates of babies born weighing 1 to 3 pounds, according to data from the Vermont Oxford Network, which tracks neonatal outcomes at more than 500 hospitals.

"Back when Ashleigh was born, it was close to borderline survival," says Kahle, who will host a picnic for former preemies Saturday at the Carmichael hospital. "Having gone through what Brie went through with Ashleigh brings a perspective of how parents might feel that other staff members might not recognize."

Oh, they recognize it, all right.

Occasionally, Simmons doesn't even get the chance to impart her personal stories to mothers of preemies. That's because her nursing colleagues do it for her.

"I'll walk in," Simmons says, "and (the parents) will say, 'So, you're Brie!' I guess it is kind of inspiring."

A strong young woman

What's really impressive is meeting Ashleigh, whose goals include vying in next year's U.S. national equestrian competition and getting accepted into the University of California, Davis, undergraduate program in animal sciences.

The only signs of her physical struggle with the spastic form of cerebral palsy is her labored gait, which improved three years ago when doctors operated to add metal plates to both femurs that realigned her legs.

Premature babies, studies show, are eight times more likely than others to develop cerebral palsy. There are several reasons. A major factor is that the lungs and nerve connections in the brain haven't fully developed. In Ashleigh's case, says her mother, doctors also found bleeding on the brain.

"A lot of people don't realize cerebral palsy has a wide spectrum of seriousness," Kahle says. "Mental retardation is not necessarily a component of cerebral palsy."

Sitting primly on the couch in a room adjacent to the NICU, Ashleigh looks the part of the "normal" teenager: long, dark-brown hair, a touch of makeup and a shy demeanor offset by sudden bursts of opinions.