Family well understands ordeal of premature birth; Charity picks Shrewsbury family as ambassadors.

Byline: Teale Karow-Reynolds

SHREWSBURY - Tracy Quinn McLennan of Shrewsbury was eagerly anticipating the birth of her first child and made sure she took every precaution to keep her unborn baby, Andrew, healthy and safe.

"I did everything right," said Mrs. McLennan, Web writer and editor of the home improvement Web site, Bobvila.com. "No peanuts, no smoking, no sushi. I even used toothpaste that had no alcohol in it."

She was just starting to enjoy being pregnant when her whole world changed. At 3 a.m. on a cold January night in 2006, she went into labor 12 weeks early. The following couple of months spent in the hospital, and all of the exhaustive, nerve-racking medical attention, were huge challenges for Mrs. McLennan and her family.

Andrew is now a normal, healthy little boy, but after such a traumatic experience, some people would just try to move on and forget it.

"Not us," Mrs. McLennan said. She and her family decided instead to reach out and help fund the research and support for other families going through the same difficult situations.

Because of the family's work, the March of Dimes has chosen the McLennans to serve as the agency's Ambassador Family for Central Massachusetts from June 2008 to June 2009.

The March of Dimes is the leading nonprofit organization working on behalf of pregnancy and baby health. In Massachusetts, 170 babies a week are born prematurely, and more than half a million such babies are born each year nationwide.

For reasons that are mostly unknown to doctors, the rate of premature birth is increasing. Factors such as environment, lifestyle, medical conditions and diet all contribute to an unborn baby's health. The March of Dimes is dedicated to learning more about preventing premature birth in order to reverse that trend and to provide support to families.

The organization's work is also geared toward finding out why healthy, responsible people such as Mrs. McLennan give birth prematurely.

Besides putting a face on the cause, the McLennans' responsibilities as March of Dimes ambassadors include giving presentations at fundraising events. One such event is Chefs for Healthy Babies, which will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Oct. 20 at Union Station in Worcester.

The McLennans will also be the leaders for the Worcester March for Babies on April 19.

"The March for Babies is an amazing event that not only raises funds for the March of Dimes but provides an opportunity for families, friends, supporters and caregivers to come together in celebration." Mrs. McLennan said.

When Mrs. McLennan was brought to Tufts Medical Center in Boston in 2006, she was given magnesium sulfate to stop her contractions. She was also injected with steroid shots, called "surfactant therapy," to help her baby's lungs develop quickly. The steroid shot was developed through March of Dimes research.

"Without this shot," Mrs. McLennan said, "extremely premature babies like Andrew would not have lived years ago, and certainly would not have thrived and had little to no respiratory problems in life. It is truly a miracle."

On Jan. 22, 2006, five days after being admitted into the hospital and 12 weeks before her due date, Mrs. McLennan gave birth to Andrew in an emergency Caesarean section. He husband, Wayne D. McLennan, a project engineer with Siemens Water Technologies of Shrewsbury, was not allowed into the operating room. He anxiously waited in the hallway for 40 minutes.

"Nothing makes a man feel more useless," he said.

Some of the complications of such an early birth include breathing problems, such as apnea and respiratory stress syndrome, intestinal problems, jaundice, anemia, chronic lung disease, infections and risk of vision loss and brain damage.

Today it is hard to imagine Andrew's perilous beginning. At birth, he weighed just 3 pounds, 4 ounces and was only 17 inches long. Mr. McLennan's wedding ring fit up past his elbow. After two weeks at Tufts, Andrew was transferred to UMass Memorial Medical Center - Memorial Campus in Worcester, where he was kept in the neonatal intensive care unit for five more weeks.

Andrew is now a normal and energetic 2-year-old who loves to get attention and watch Mickey Mouse shows. The McLennans believe they are extremely lucky, and they are grateful for all that the March of Dimes has done. If it weren't for the March of Dimes' research, Andrew would not be the healthy, happy little boy that he is today, they said.

As Mrs. McLennan will explain in her talk at the Chefs for Babies event, "We have made it to that critical two-year milestone - with endless doctors' appointments, early intervention sessions, meetings with specialists and so on - and can finally breathe a sigh of relief."

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: Andrew McLennan plays with a flower he picked for his mother, Tracy Quinn McLennan. He was born 12 weeks early.

PHOTOG: ALEX WITKOWICZ