Born Under 2 Pounds but All Fight : Families: Tiny infant, almost four months premature, is home after miraculously beating all the odds.

Shayne Holzman is home at last.

Born almost four months prematurely while her parents, Allan Holzman and Susan Justin of Santa Monica, were on a business trip to Baltimore, Shayne, now nearly 5 months old and weighing a hefty 4 pounds, 7 ounces, was released Monday from Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center.

Shayne seemed to take it in stride. Once home, her mother said, she acted like any other infant.

“She drank her milk and slept for more than five hours straight,” Justin said.

Doctors say that Shayne has emerged from a remarkable 4 1/2-month medical ordeal relatively unscathed, and that her prospects for leading a healthy life are very good. But someday, Holzman, Justin and their 3-year-old daughter, Justine, will probably tell Shayne just how harrowing the first months of her life were.

The drama started in Baltimore in mid-July. The family of three had traveled there so that Holzman, a free-lance producer of TV shows, could tape episodes for the reality-based series, “Emergency Call.” But within 48 hours, he found life imitating art. He was facing an emergency of his own.

In the early morning hours of July 16, Justin, 24 weeks pregnant, awoke in their hotel room with severe abdominal pains. Holzman tried to help by massaging his wife’s shoulders, then her spine, then her feet. The pains continued. He called the University of Maryland Hospital, three blocks away, and was told to “see if the pain lasts the night.” It did.

It was Justine’s third birthday, but there were no celebrations. Her mother was still in pain as doctors wheeled her away for tests in the morning.

The test results, Holzman recalled, were “frightening.” The attending physician, Dr. Marshall St. Amant, told him the baby was outside the uterus. The condition, known as an abdominal pregnancy, happens about once in 150,000 pregnancies. Justin’s regular prenatal checkups and sonograms had not detected the abnormal condition.

A CAT scan confirmed St. Amant’s fears. Justin was hemorrhaging internally, and the placenta was separating from the uterus. St. Amant told Holzman that his wife’s life was in jeopardy and that an emergency Cesarean section was the only recourse. The baby’s chances of survival, he said, were slim; at that point her lungs were only about 3 days old.

The operation was performed that evening, and Dr. Ira Gewolb, head of neonatology and pediatrics at the hospital, soon emerged with some amazing news.

“By all rights your baby should not be alive,” he told Holzman, “but she was pink, and she came out kicking.”

And Shayne--seven inches long at birth and tipping the scales at 1 pound, 5 ounces--has been fighting and kicking ever since.

The first two months were a roller coaster.

“She has been real day-to-day,” Holzman said. At eight days, Shayne developed a condition that caused bleeding in the brain, a frequent complication of premature births that often leads to permanent neurological damage.

At one point, he and Justin tearfully pondered whether to take the infant off her life-support system. But a member of the medical team, Dr. Rose Viscardi--born prematurely herself--talked them into giving Shayne a chance. The odds were one in 20 that the bleeding would resolve without causing any permanent brain damage, but Shayne once more defied the odds.

It was only after about six weeks that Shayne started to gain weight and strength, Holzman said.

Adding to the emotional difficulty, Justin recalled, was the physical separation from Shayne, who lived beyond her parents’ touch inside a respirator. Justin visited at least every other day. In between, she pumped breast milk and stored it for Shayne.

“That gave me a way to be a mom,” Justin said. “I didn’t get to hold her until she was 6 weeks old. She looked like E.T.”

And like the extraterrestrial in the movie, Shayne was still a long way from home.

Getting there proved quite a challenge. A commercial flight was not feasible because Shayne’s delicate condition required that the trip be made with a medical team and an extensive array of equipment. An air ambulance was necessary, but it would cost $30,000.

Holzman’s insurance company, CNA Casualty of Chicago, already faced with a tab of about $250,000 for mother and daughter, declined to pay for the air ambulance, saying it was not covered under Holzman’s plan.

Help came from an unlikely source. A Baltimore newspaper, the Evening Sun, discovered the family’s plight. In response to the stories, the Weinglass Foundation, a Baltimore charity that grants last wishes to terminally ill children, offered to put up $7,800 and steered the family toward Mercy Medical Air Transport of Virginia. Mercy accepted the $7,800, agreed to absorb the rest of the cost itself, and Shayne was on her way. The trip to Santa Monica, in a two-engine Cessna, took 16 hours.

Shayne was checked in to Santa Monica Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on Oct. 29 at 2 pounds, 10 ounces.

“She was long and thin, with larger than usual eyes and head,” said Dr. Hugh MacDonald, one of the three doctors who treated her. Nonetheless, he added, “She was pretty healthy-looking and alert.”

In the five weeks she spent hospitalized in Santa Monica, Shayne nearly doubled her weight and developed the ability to breathe by herself.

“We’ve worked hard to foster her development in terms of nursing herself adequately instead of being tube-fed. And while she might be at a disadvantage in how she fights off a cold in her first year, the chances are strong that she will outgrow this,” MacDonald said.

“Shayne has no significant (health) problems now,” added Dr. Claudia Allayne, an attending neonatologist. “Her chances of a relatively healthy life are good.”

In general, Allayne said, children born in the 24th week of gestation have about a 50% chance of survival. But many who survive do so with chronic medical problems or disabilities. Neurological problems are common, as is lung damage because of the amount of time the babies have to spend on respirators. Hearing and vision problems are also typical, Allayne said.

At home in Santa Monica this week, Holzman said he was savoring the pleasure of “being surrounded by three girls.”

“It’s not at all bad,” he said with a smile, adding that he looks at other babies these days, and they seem like giants compared to Shayne.

“But I don’t want other babies; I want mine,” he said.

Justin, who sat nearby, nodded her approval as she gently rocked the tiny miracle in her arms.