‘His Whole Head Fit In the Palm of My Hand’
Kevin and Enza Youkilis on Preemies and Parenting
By Deirdre Wilson
Enza Youkilis had plenty of time to prepare for the early birth of her son, Michael. She was on hospital bed rest for three weeks in 2005 after her water broke only 29 weeks into her pregnancy. She knew then that she’d be delivering a premature infant. Confined to her bed, she started asking questions and reading “every book possible” on what to expect with a premature infant. She was consumed with worry that her baby would not survive.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, my son could die’ and that’s all I could really think about – that there was a possibility that he wasn’t going to survive,” says Enza, the wife of Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis. “As a parent, you normally go through the eight to nine months of being pregnant and you never think, ‘My child is going to die. You think, ‘I’m going to have a baby and the baby is going to be healthy.’”
Bringing Up Mikey
What’s it like growing up in the family of a Boston Red Sox star player? Not too different than in other families with dual-working parents. For 4-year-old Mikey, the son of Enza Youkilis and her husband, first baseman Kevin Youkilis, it means splitting time between one parent or the other.
Enza does the lion’s share of the parenting, particularly during baseball season when Kevin works 12 hours a day. In the off-season, “Kevin is probably the parent who’s putting in most of the time, whereas I get to focus a little more on the [Kevin Youkilis Hits for Kids] charity and things like that.”
Like most of us, Kevin and Enza differ on parenting strategies from time to time. “I’m by far the disciplinarian, unfortunately. I’m always the bad guy,” Enza says.
Kevin attributes parenting differences to their different backgrounds – Enza’s Italian Catholic childhood, his own upbringing as a Jew. “We do differ on some things, but in the end, we kind of come into agreement on the goal – the big picture is what’s best for your child,” Kevin says. “Mikey – he does pretty well for himself now. Once he got out of those 3’s – I just have to say it, there are no terrible 2’s. It’s 3! But once he got out of that 3 stage, it was great. He’s been phenomenal.”
One thing that both parents agree on is keeping Mikey out of the public spotlight, which can be tricky since Kevin gets plenty of attention from Red Sox Nation.
“I always get really worried and concerned about people taking photographs of him,” Kevin says. “You just don’t know the world today; there’s crazy things that happen.” But, he notes, his is not the kind of celebrity family hounded by the paparazzi. “That never happens.”
When Mikey is out with Kevin and people ask for autographs, “he kind of pulls at your leg a little bit and he gets a little frustrated – because, you know, I don’t get to spend a lot of time with him during the season and now … if his time gets pulled away, he gets a little jealous with it. He’ll say, ‘No Daddy, let’s go.’”
But the family spends a lot of time at home, ensuring that Mikey gets plenty of uninterrupted attention. “We’re both very grounded people,” Enza says. |
“Mikey” entered the world on July 8, 2005, eight and a half weeks early, 17 inches long and weighing just 3 pounds, 2 ounces. At his gestational age, he had a 65 percent rate of survival.
But survive he did. Today, at age 4, Mikey is thriving. “He’s beyond healthy,” quips Kevin, who married Enza in 2008 and happily took on the role of “daddy” to Mikey, Enza’s son through a previous marriage.
A Personal Cause
This year, Kevin and Enza Youkilis are taking on another role – chairing the 2010 March for Babies events in New England, which annually raise money for the March of Dimes, the national organization that works to prevent birth defects, premature births and infant death through education, advocacy and research.
Youkilises are helping through their Kevin Youkilis Hits for Kids charity (www.youkskids.org), a 2-year-old organization headed by Enza that harnesses local and corporate support for programs that improve children’s lives in New England and in Kevin’s hometown of Cincinnati. Hits for Kids has supported such agencies as the Italian Home for Children, which cares for children with emotional disturbances, and Birthday Wishes, which provides birthday parties for local homeless children.
Kevin and Enza are forming a Hits for Kids team to walk in the Massachusetts March of Dimes’ March for Babies event, scheduled for May 8 this year.
“We feel really passionate about the March of Dimes because of the really great work that they do every day and the fact that because of the March of Dimes, our son was able to survive,” Enza says. “There are millions of babies born out there every day who don’t survive or that are born really, really early and do survive. We know that we’ve been fortunate that we had a baby that lasted and was healthy because of all the research that they do.”
The First Intense Weeks
When Mikey came into the world, “he was a peanut,” Enza says. “His whole head fit in the palm of my hand. He was 17 inches long.”
At St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton, she was given injections to build up Mikey’s lungs so they’d be developed when she delivered him. He emerged relatively healthy, Enza says, but couldn’t maintain his body weight, keep his body heated or breastfeed on his own.
During his first six weeks, Mikey stayed in an incubator in the hospital’s NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). “I was in the NICU day in and day out,” Enza says. “All day long. I got to do everything. I got to give him a bath.
“I got really close to all the nurses there; they were amazing. … He was so tiny. Every other day, they had to change his IV or prick the heel of his foot to get bilirubin levels [which can indicate jaundice]. He never had jaundice. He kind of bypassed that.” In fact, he bypassed many complications that arise with premature birth, Enza says. “I was really, really lucky.”
So is Mikey. At just over 6 weeks, he and Enza left the hospital for home with a packet of information on how to help him reach crucial developmental milestones. “Every single day, I worked on this, whether it was putting his hand forward and rolling him over or getting him up on all fours. He was always age-appropriate at everything he did,” Enza says. “He ended up walking at exactly one year, which is unheard of with a preemie that’s two and half months early.”
Nationally, one in eight babies is born prematurely, often for no known reason, according to the March of Dimes. Some don’t survive. Others are vulnerable to serious heart, vision and lung problems. Enza’s advice to parents of preemies: read everything you can, ask questions and listen carefully to the nurses in the NICU. “They’ll teach you everything you need to know,” she says.
To learn more about the Massachusetts March of Dimes, the March for Babies, and how you can help, visit www.marchofdimes.com/massachusetts.
Deirdre Wilson is senior editor of the Boston Parents Paper. <
Memorable Moments
For Enza, seeing her son the moment he was born sealed her love for him in an instant. But what about Kevin, who took on the fathering role when he married Enza in 2008? What really drove home his importance in Mikey’s life? It happened, he says, shortly after his team ended the 2009 season with a heartbreaking American League division loss to the Los Angeles Angels last fall. “It was not fun to end the season on the note we ended,” Kevin says. “So it was like two days later and I told [Mikey], ‘Daddy doesn’t have to go back to work for a long time, and he had this look in his eyes. He gave me a huge hug and he was so excited. I took him to school, I picked him up. He just loved it! “I have to say, this off season – more than anything, you just finally realize how much good we have in our relationship. Going forward will be great.” |
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