San Benito residents form team for March of Dimes walk
On the March for San Benito Babies team Web site, Catherine
Farnham writes about how pre-term labor has affected many of her
family members.
”
It’s no wonder, then, that I am so personally concerned,
”
she writes.
San Benito residents form team for March of Dimes walk
On the March for San Benito Babies team Web site, Catherine Farnham writes about how pre-term labor has affected many of her family members.
“It’s no wonder, then, that I am so personally concerned,” she writes.
Farnham is a public health nurse who works with the San Benito Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies coalition to promote perinatal and prenatal services. She is also recruiting members for the team that will participate in the March of Dimes March for Babies May 17, in Pacific Grove. So far the team has six members signed up on the Web site who will each raise money for the March of Dimes. The team members have a goal of $1,000 and have collected $615 through online donations.
The March of Dimes is a national nonprofit that promotes prenatal and newborn health screenings that can prevent illnesses, or catch them early enough to treat them. At least 77 cents of every dollar raised supports research and programs that help women carry full-term pregnancies and help babies start out healthy.
Farnham has selected two people to serve as San Benito County ambassadors for the walk. The first ambassador is Jorge Perez, an 18-month-old who was born with a heart defect.
His mother, Kathy Perez, had a routine ultrasound that revealed her baby had a heart defect. But at eight months, an ultrasound revealed that there were further complications. Perez delivered her son by emergency Cesarean four weeks early. Jorge weighed five pounds, five ounces at birth.
“We were at Stanford [Hospital] and there were so many people involved,” Perez said. “He was born at Good Samaritan, but they took him that night to Stanford to the NICU [Neonatal intensive care unit] and they did surgery on him.”
Jorge had a second surgery when he was three months old, and will need another one around age 3.
“The third surgery may last up to 30 years, and then he’ll need a heart transplant,” Perez said.
Kelly Streeton, the second ambassador, grew up in Hollister but now lives in Santa Barbara.
“I want to increase prenatal education and hopefully increase prenatal care for mothers and babies,” she said of signing on to be an ambassador. She plans to walk with the San Benito team in Pacific Grove on May 17.
But Streeton has another reason to be involved.
“I’m sort of the other side of the coin, I guess,” she said.
It was after she married and moved to Santa Barbara with her husband that she discovered she had a heart problem that prevented her from carrying a pregnancy.
“Jorge was born with a heart defect, and I was, too, but it didn’t come to a head until I was in my 20s,” she said.
After a pregnancy and a miscarriage, doctors discovered that Streeton had an irregular heartbeat that led her heart to beat too fast, event at rest. A cardiologist told her she could not carry a healthy pregnancy until she had the problem fixed. The first attempt to regulate her heartbeat, “in which catheters were threaded into my heart to freeze or burn the mutated electrical connections,” did not work. A second attempt also failed.
“Watching friends and family welcome new babies into their lives caused me to cry in private each time,” Streeton wrote in her ambassador bio for the team Web site.
After several more procedures to correct her heartbeat, Streeton still needed to ensure that her heart was strong. For a year, she took cardiac tests to show her heart was strong, and finally her doctors cleared her for pregnancy.
She took prenatal vitamins and continued an exercise routine to keep her heart healthy. She started shopping at a farmer’s market for pesticide-free foods and buying dairy products that were free of growth hormones.
She is now five months pregnant and looking forward to the birth of her first child.
“I’m just excited to be an ambassador,” she said. “In a way it seems like if my experience can help other people get through it – have a healthy mother and a healthy baby – all this is for a purpose maybe.”
Though she will be more than six months pregnant by the March for Babies walk, she plans to complete as much of it as she can.
“I’m going to waddle as many of the 6.3 miles as I can,” she said. “My husband and I both plan to participate … He will be there to support me and carry my water bottle, and snacks.”
The Marching for San Benito Babies team will participate in the March for Babies event at Lovers Point Park in Pacific Grove May 17. Registration is at 8 a.m., with the 6.25-mile walk starting at 9 a.m. To become a sponsor, a walker or for more information, visit www.marchforbabies.org/teams/637497 or contact Catherine Farnham at 637-5367 or [email protected].
