BY LORI NASSIF ISTOK
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: William with Lori on the day after he came home from the hospital in September 2005. William in the NICU in May 2005. Lori doing“ kangaroo care” with William. William visiting the NICU on his tenth birthday, posing with one of his two primary nurses, Nancy. Lori and William at the March for Babies in Boston in 2024. William visiting the Women & Infants NICU on his fifteenth birthday( during COVID!) while posing with one of his two primary nurses, Nancy. KJ, Anika, William and Lori Istok in November 2025. Team Will Power at the March for Babies in 2013. KJ, baby William and sister Anika in the NICU.
vous resident explained the risks and possible outcomes. Nothing the doctor said was particularly reassuring or hopeful. Babies born at fewer than twenty-four weeks’ gestation were not then considered“ viable,” and to complicate things further, our baby was breech. If he even survived the delivery, something the doctor referred to as“ unlikely,” chances are he would have major complications: a possible brain bleed, trouble with his lungs, vision problems or hearing loss … any number of horrible possibilities.
As it turned out, soon after I was weaned off the magnesium, labor resumed and William made his dramatic early arrival. He was a tenacious little guy from the start, unaware that his odds of survival as a white male born so prematurely back then were only about 22 percent. William defied the odds, surviving— and eventually even thriving. One of the NICU nurses insisted on taking photos of us with our shockingly premature son, photos we thought we didn’ t want. If the outcome was bad, it would make us so sad to look at the photos later. If the outcome was good, would we really want to look back and remember those stressful, uncertain first few hours and days after William was born? And despite several nurses telling us how“ stinkin’ cute” our son was, he didn’ t appear that way to us at the time. His skin was red and seemed to be stretched too tightly over his tiny body. His eyes were still fused shut, making it look as though he had no eyes at all. He was scarcely bigger than my husband’ s outstretched hand, and he looked for all the world like a tiny burn victim.
In those early photos, my husband and I are smiling, leading friends to ask how we
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