The NICU saved their baby boy's life. Here's how a Holden couple are giving back

WORCESTER — It was in the quiet of the NICU, listening to the whir and beep of the machines that kept one of their twin boys alive and watching his small form struggle, where Megan and Bryan McDavitt found a community of support.

It was the gentle presence of staff, their inclusion in the healing process, the small gifts from other parents left on their surviving son's isolete in 2018 that reminded them they were not alone. Now they are making sure other parents in the same struggle to help their infants survive feel that support.

“When Chuck was born, I could hold him in the palm of my hand,” said Bryan McDavitt, remembering how awed he was by the fragility of the tiny baby. Now, seven years later, his son is thriving, even playing soccer on a local youth team.

With his wife, the Holden couple have taken over and expanded an annual 5K road race and fun run that benefits the neonatal intensive care unit at UMass Memorial Medical Center, to ensure that it continues performing medical miracles like the care that saved their son. The event, originally a triathlon, was first held in 2009 and organized by the Vescio family of Grafton, whose premature triplets — Tyrus, Dante and Daniel — died in 2005.

The Tiny Footprints 5K, Walk and TDD Kids Fun Run, named for the triplets, is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Oct. 5 at Polar Park in Worcester. The event features a race, a fun run, a beer garden with food afterward and, of course, swag.

“Hundreds of NICU families come back to Worcester for the event,” said Wendy Timpson, clinical chief of UMass Memorial's division of neonatology, adding she believes the all-day event gives many families a sense of closure. The event raises money for the NICU, equipment and an annual memorial service for families.

Megan and Bryan McDavitt greet nurse Diane McCorison, who cared for their son in the NICU and later became his first babysitter.

“It’s so meaningful, as a physician, to see these families in their recovery phase, the children growing and moving on, and moving through their trauma,” Timpson said. “For us caregivers, there’s an enormous sense of gratification to see them coming together and doing well.”

Every family that has transitioned through the NICU after a birth has a unique story. While the majority of the infants treated are born prematurely — the youngest to date at 22 weeks of gestation and weighing between 400 to 500 grams, about a pound — others face illness, infection or birth-related trauma, Timpson said.

The medical center’s 40-bed unit treats 800 newborns a year, on average.

Bryan McDavitt remembers that difficult day in September 2018 when his wife, Megan, woke up with back pain. The couple raced to the obstetrician’s office. Megan was careful to grab her laptop to make sure she could continue working, not realizing that she would spend seven days in the hospital before undergoing an emergency C-section to deliver her twins at 25 weeks.

Chuck weighed 1 pound and 9 ounces; his twin, Luke, weighed 1 pound and 6 ounces. Only Chuck survived. The boys had been due on Jan. 12, 2019.

“A big part of me was hoping I would be given medication that would hold off labor, but it got very real when the NICU team came to us and talked about the implications of delivery that early,” Megan McDavitt said. “The focus was on getting me out alive, and then on the babies.”

Megan McDavitt shows the tiny diaper that was worn by their son Chuck when he was in the UMass Memorial Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit.

“When you’re pregnant with two babies, you expect to bring two babies home,” Megan McDavitt said. “Not that you may not have any babies, or just one baby. It’s unbelievable.”

At that time, the couple were unprepared for the birth of the boys — no pregnancy announcement, no baby shower and the room had not been set up. And they were certainly unprepared for the challenges that awaited them — the loss of one of their sons, then spending 100 days in the NICU with their other son.

Despite her nursing background, Megan McDavitt was unfamiliar with the NICU. Over the course of her son's stay, staring at the monitors, staring at her newborn, listening for any sounds that indicated a change in his condition, she learned it is the place where “amazing things happen for tiny babies that many think would never survive.”

“It’s hard to understand what families have been through,” Megan McDavitt said. But the experience is something they share with many other families. “We’re open about our story. It helps keep Luke’s memory alive. He is very much a part of our family.”

In the NICU, the couple found a loving and supportive community. Families were supportive of each other, with many donating baby clothing, diapers and supplies for use by others. In the McDavitts' room, a family that had been there before had stocked the cupboard with books.

The new parents spent as much time as they could at the hospital. When they could not be there, their parents and even grandparents stepped in. They started reading to the boy on Oct. 3, plowing through the books in the cupboard and making their way through the first four Harry Potter books before heading home in January.

Around Christmastime, Chuck’s isolate was strewn with special little gifts — handmade ornaments, key chains, baby blankets — left by other families in the NICU. Those items still decorate the McDavitts' tree at home, and the baby blankets are used as the tree skirt.

“It’s all very special,” Megan McDavitt said. Every Christmas, she noted, the staff reads the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” at midnight.

Lasting friendships were forged in the NICU. Their primary nurse, Diane McCorison, was Chuck’s first babysitter in February 2019, a month after the family left the hospital, when Bryan McDavitt took his wife out to celebrate her 33rd birthday.

Megan McDavitt holds a T-shirt for last year's Tiny Footprints 5K. This year's event is scheduled Oct. 5.

“Who better,” they asked themselves, than the primary care nurse they had already trusted with their son’s life night after night?

“I just snuggled him the whole time,” McCorison said, remembering the reunion with the surviving twin. She was the attending nurse when Megan McDavitt gave birth to her third child, daughter Millie, born in November 2021.

“The whole time I was pregnant with my daughter, I was in my head,” Megan McDavitt said. “I thought, ‘I only have to make it to 25 weeks,’ then it was 26 weeks, then 27 weeks, by the time I made it to 30 weeks, I said, ‘She’ll be fine.’ What I had gone through was so horrible, anything past 25 weeks would be fine.”

Millie's birth was right on schedule.

Both children are doing well. Chuck, who turns 7 on Sept. 29, is tall and strong, never stops asking questions and reads voraciously. Millie loves sports, tells stories and plays soccer, just like her big brother.

“Chuck still thinks he’s that small," Bryan McDavitt said, adding, "he’ll climb all over me. He loves to snuggle."

But even as both children are thriving, Megan McDavitt still always feels protective. “I know he’s bigger, stronger, but I still always feel that it’s not over somehow.”

In telling their story and organizing the fundraiser, the couple are striving to ensure that other families are afforded the same support, care and consideration they received and were comforted by as they were faced with the sudden life-and-death situation of their sons.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: The NICU saved their baby boy's life. Here's how a Holden couple are giving back