One Patient's Story: Weston

If you met Weston today, you would see an energetic, healthy five-year-old, looking back at you with the bluest eyes you have ever seen.

At first, this might not seem special, but when you are looking at Weston you are looking at a miracle. Weston did not begin life as a happy and healthy baby. He came into the world four months premature – weighing just one pound, 11 ounces and clinging to his life.

Weston was placed into the expert hands of the doctors and nurses of the world-renowned Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“When Weston was born, the staff of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit began working on him immediately,” says Weston’s mom Gayle. “We were in shock. I remember thinking ‘We were supposed to have a beautiful baby boy in August, not April…our families are supposed to be smiling, not crying…how could this have happened?’”

 “To make matters worse, a routine biopsy of my placenta revealed a rare microbial infection, only the ninth ever seen in the United States,” Gayle says. “And Weston had the infection in his tiny body too.”

Dr. Eric Eichenwald, Associate Director of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, treated Weston for the first delicate month of his life. Today he is an active and healthy little boy.

Gayle says, “I know what would have happened if Weston had not been at Brigham and Women’s. I know that our lives would never be the same without him.”