A grateful family said thank you Monday to the team that saved their premature baby in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
It was a special reunion for the nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit at Jefferson Abington and the Krause family from Bensalem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baby Alton Krause spent 142 days in the NICU after he was born prematurely in September, weighing just 1 pound.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’d never seen a baby that tiny,” mom Kayla Krause said. “So it was just scary.”<\/p>\n
Alton was born when she was just 22 weeks pregnant, four months before his due date.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“At 22 weeks, we talk about that in neonatology as the gray area or the borderline of viability,” Dr. Eddie Chang, a neonatologist at Jefferson Abington, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chang said Alton developed a lung condition and was treated with a high-frequency jet ventilator.<\/p>\n
“The way it works is actually it pulses really tiny breaths into the baby’s lungs on the order of 300 to 400 times a second,” Chang said. “When we see babies like Alton survive, I think that this machine is one critical piece for that to happen.”<\/p>\n
Alton now weighs 12 pounds and is meeting all his milestones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His parents say visiting the NICU team was a homecoming and they’re filled with gratitude.<\/p>\n
“They saved his life,” Kayla Krause said. “They were like second moms to him.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Doctors say Alton defied the odds by surviving without any complications.<\/p>\n
“I always had faith that he was going to be OK,” dad William Krause said, “but, you know, it’s still, it was just a scary time.”<\/p>\n
Now, the couple is getting ready to celebrate their first Mother’s Day with Alton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We found out last year on Mother’s Day we were pregnant. So, this year to have him home and with us is just an incredible feeling,” Kayla Krause said.<\/p>\n