Young family selected as ambassadors
Like many 1-year-old boys, Travis Richards smiles incessantly, likes music, enjoys being outside and adores his older brother, Levi.
Watching him dance along to his favorite music, no one would imagine he spent the first six weeks of his life in a neonatal unit struggling for his life after being born nine weeks early.
That is why his parents, Brian and Nicole Richards, of Worth Township, are ecstatic the March of Dimes Foundation has selected their family to be the 2011 ambassador family for the Butler March for Babies, set for 10 a.m. May 7 at Butler County Community College.
According to Renee Himes, community director at the Pittsburgh March of Dimes chapter, the foundation undergoes a selective process to appoint its ambassador families.
“We choose a family that has recently been touched by one or two children and a family that is willing to share their story and represent the organization in the annual walk,” Himes said.
According to the March of Dimes Foundation, its mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality.
The annual event is a 3-mile walk around the BC3 campus.
Himes said there are 57 fund raising teams scheduled to walk, however registration will continue through the day of the event.
Proceeds will benefit families so they can have healthy full-term pregnancies.
“We didn't know if he was going to make it,” Nicole said of Travis, who weighed 4 pounds, 5 ounces when he was born in January 2010.
“I only got to hold him for a second and all I could think was if he should pass away he at least has to know what it was like to be in his mom's arms for a moment. That was the worst night of my life.”
Travis was immediately rushed to West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh where he would be cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit along with 40 other babies with similar conditions.
“While he was in the NICU, I wasn't permitted to hold him for the first week,” Nicole said. “The doctors told me that I wasn't even allowed to stroke his hands because they were too delicate.”While it was not easy for his parents to travel the hourlong commute, they weren't going to miss visiting every day even if they were only allowed to look at him through a window.While in the NICU, Travis experienced respiratory and heart complications.“You had to wait for the nurses to get Travis ready because he had a hard time regulating his own body temperature,” Nicole said. “Our time with him was limited because his temperature would drop and the nurses would have to place him in a controlled-temperature isolate.”Travis also suffered from respiratory distress syndrome, RDS. Babies with RDS struggle to breathe because their lungs do not produce enough of a certain protein called surfactant, which keeps the small air sacs in the lungs from collapsing.Grants from the March of Dimes help develop surfacant therapy, which was introduced in 1990. Since then, deaths from RDS have lessened by two-thirds, according to the agency.Once Travis became strong enough six weeks after his birth, he was able to leave the hospital and go home with his family.Today, Travis weighs 20 pounds, placing him in the 15th percentile for 1-year-olds. He eats everything on his plate.Although his parents need to monitor Travis for a tiny hole in his heart, his mother said the doctors think it should close on its own in the near future.The Richardses credit their son's survival and progress to the March of Dimes Foundation.They say they are anxious to help the March of Dimes Foundation raise awareness of the efforts to help children like their son.“We had a happy ending to our story,” Nicole said. “We want him to be a model for other people going through the same situation.”To donate or to accompany the Richards family on the walk, call 412-505-2200 or register at www.marchforbabies.org. Walkers can sign up as individuals or in teams.
