Mackenzie Brooks is a healthy, animated child from Ridgewood, New Jersey, who one moment loves to play sports and the next minute to play dress-up. Her good health, however, was not always a certainty.
Mackenzie was born eight weeks premature on June 5, 1993, weighing only 3 pounds, 8 ounces. Her mother Gail, who has systemic lupus erythematosis, underwent an emergency cesarean section at Hackensack University Medical Center after suffering severe bleeding. Mackenzie was immediately taken to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The March of Dimes helped initiate and fund the regionalized system of NICUs in the United States. Here Mackenzie received the benefits of many advances in newborn care.
Doctors warned Mackenzie’s parents that the first 18 hours of their baby’s life would be a honeymoon period. Then her condition would likely take a turn for the worse. Indeed, Mackenzie did experience severe respiratory distress. Her lungs collapsed and she was put on a respirator. Her chances of survival seemed slim.
Mackenzie’s only hope was treatment with surfactant. The use of surfactant, an oily substance needed to re-inflate the lungs after each breath was developed in part by research funded by the March of Dimes. Mackenzie’s father anxiously watched as the doctors administered the first and then the second doses of surfactant, but saw no response. One hour later, moments before the final dose, Mackenzie’s condition improved and continued to do so.
When Mackenzie was two weeks old, her parents finally were able to hold her in their arms. Two weeks later, after spending one month in the NICU, Mackenzie went home to a house surrounded by celebratory balloons.
Gail and Rich Brooks, March of Dimes volunteers since the 1980s (Gail currently is chairman of the board of trustees of the North Jersey Chapter and Rich is a board member), say they never imagined that the organization they volunteered for would also help save their own daughter’s life.
Mackenzie is one of many success stories. However, there still are too many babies in America who don't survive a premature birth. The March of Dimes is funding special research to find out why more than 460,000 babies each year are born too soon, and what can be done to fight prematurity.
