Born too soon

The flashing heart monitors.

The whooshing respirators.

The babies who never cry, and the parents who do.

It all comes back to Elanie Purkis each time she visits the neonatal intensive care unit at Mercy San Juan Medical Center.

"It's very emotional," Purkis says. "It's almost too much."

But Purkis and her husband Tim visit the unit anyway, at least a couple of times a month. Because their twin boys, who were born far too soon, survived. Because they had friends and family members close by to help them through their crisis. Because others do not.

"We realize that we were very fortunate, and we want to do something to help other families," Purkis says.

That "something" is called Friends of NICU.

The group, a branch of Mercy Foundation, offers vouchers for fuel, housing, food and supplies to needy families who find themselves far from home as their premature babies get treatment at the Carmichael hospital. Tim and

Elanie Purkis started the organization earlier this year with $10,000 of their own money and plan to finance it in the future through fundraising events and donations. Already, they have helped about two dozen moms and dads with babies in the NICU.

More families than ever are facing the consequences of premature births.

According to the March of Dimes, the rate of infants born before 37 weeks gestation has increased more than 30 percent in the United States since 1981. Part of the reason, according to the organization, is that women are having children later in life. The highest rate of premature births occurs among women ages 40 and older. Twins and other "multiples" are more likely to be premature. Other causes of premature birth include drug and alcohol abuse and infections.

In an average week, more than 9,700 premature babies are born in America, and more than 1,500 of them are born at less than 32 weeks gestation. These very premature children are at risk for lifelong disabilities including cerebral palsy, blindness and heart and lung abnormalities.

Not every hospital has an neonatal intensive care unit, where medical specialists treat babies as small as the palm of a hand. Because their internal organs have yet to fully develop, most of these infants cannot breathe or feed or even cry on their own, and are at high risk for deadly infections.

Often they must spend weeks or months inside the unit, which in some cases can be hours away from where their parents live.

The Purkis twins, Ryan and Matthew, were born at 30 weeks gestation on a rainy morning in January 2006.

"On the way to the hospital I kept thinking, 'I'm not in labor,'" Elanie recalls. "'It's too early. No way.'"

Collectively, the boys weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces. Nurses whisked them away to the NICU before Elanie got a chance to see them.

"The doctors told us that they were small and that Ryan was very sick," Tim Purkis says. "But I don't think we really grasped the concept of what that meant. There's no way to prepare for it."

Elanie got her first look at the boys the next day. They lay motionless in isolettes, attached to blinking, bleeping machines that monitored every heartbeat and breath. The Purkises were allowed to touch the babies, cupping the tops of their heads and the bottoms of their feet, but not to hold them or feed them.

"We felt so helpless," Elanie says.

Matthew spent six weeks in the unit. Ryan, who had serious lung problems, was there for 10 weeks. Elanie and Tim stayed with them in shifts, alternating time at home with their toddler son Kevin.

Though their commute back and forth from Folsom was only about 30 minutes, the Purkises met other parents of preemies who traveled to the hospital from as far away as Chico and Placerville.

"We saw people who wanted to visit their babies every day, but couldn't because they had to work or they couldn't afford the gas or a hotel," says Elanie. Some slept in their cars in the hospital parking lot. Some were able to see their infants only on weekends. Some of the babies were much smaller than Ryan and Matthew. Some didn't make it.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Cynthia Hubert can be reached at (916)321-1082 or chubert@sacbee.com.