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Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 9:00AM 
Michael Vosburg / Forum Photo EditorHope Levos performs volleyball drills with her team prior to a game Sept. 21 in Casselton, N.D. Hope weighed just 15.6 ounces at birth. Now 13, she is a seventh grader at Central Cass.
(see reference: Photo republished with permission of The Forum of Fargo Moorhead.)
Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 9:00AM 
The Forum follows up on six stories of prematurity we’ve told over the years
The tiniest babies tell the biggest stories. Stories of courage and strength, faith and love. They embody in their tiny frames the will to live.
The tiniest babies tell the biggest stories. Stories of courage and strength, faith and love. They embody in their tiny frames the will to live.
Over the years, The Forum has told many stories of babies born too soon. The Red River Valley has reached out repeatedly to such families with care and compassion.
Today, we look back at six of these stories and where the families are now.
Each baby started out life in the neonatal intensive care unit with early days and even months filled with uncertainty. Now each family reports a pretty “normal” existence and relishes in their regular routines.
Like Hope Levos, who at her smallest weighed 14 ounces and now plays on the Central Cass junior high volleyball team. Or the Christoffers of Moorhead, who as third-graders do homework and practice piano.
Greta Tangquist loves to dress up like a princess. Callie Medders is a big sister. Andrew Skalicky holds his own bottle. The Jensen quads from Ogema, Minn., are typical 2-year-olds.
All things considered, these preemies now have very few medical issues. Each family realizes not all preterm births have as happy of endings, and are thankful for their little miracles.
(see reference: Article republished with permission of The Forum of Fargo Moorhead.)
Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 8:52AM ;)
David Samson/The ForumHope Levos
The Levos family prepared for the possibility that Hope would struggle with lifelong physical and mental disabilities. There simply wasn’t a lot of reliable statistical information available.
“At one point, the doctor said she’d never run and play like other kids,” Brenda said.
Hope, a redheaded seventh-grader with freckles, is petite, but has no lingering medical issues, Brenda said. “She visits the clinic far less than most kids, I think,” she said.
Brenda is writing a book about their experiences. Two days a week, she volunteers to rock babies at the Sanford NICU.
Sometimes as they watch Hope’s games, Tom will jokingly mouth that doctor’s words to Brenda.
“She’s headstrong and she’s a fighter,” Brenda said. “She’s just a happy, vibrant, hardworking young woman.”
(see reference: Article republished with permission of The Forum of Fargo Moorhead.)
Saturday, November 25, 2000 at 4:13PM 
Born premature at 14 ounces, Hope Levos exudes the energy of any little 3-year-old as her parents, Brenda, left and Tom, and her 2-year-old sister, Megan, look on at their Leonard home. Born 14 ounces, Leonard girl full of zest at age 3
by Cole Short/The Forum
LEONARD, N.D. — Hope flashes a wide grin and bounds across her family's living room in hot pursuit of a red balloon.
The bright-eyed, bubbly girl twists, giggles and gives up chasing the elusive balloon. She'd rather catapult herself off the livingroom couch.
"Hope, be caaaaaareful," her mother, Brenda chides.
Hope ignores the warning and continues to jump and flop across the cushy sofa.
Brenda and her husband, Tom, aren't mad. Actually, they're thankful.
The couple says it's hard to believe their bustling, growing daughter was once smaller than her doctor's hand.
Hope weighed 14 ounces when she was bon on Thanksgiving eve 1996.
The tiny infant, dubbed "God's miracle" by her doctor, was born nearly 15 weeks premature and was so small she could wear Tom's wedding ring as a bracelet.
The rural Leonard girl will celebrate her fourth birthday Monday and shows few visible signs of her incredible birth or slow road to recovery.
"She's gone beyond all of our expectations," Tom says. "She's doing everything a normal little kid does."
In the fall 1996, Brenda was diagnosed with HELLP (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes and low platelet count) syndrome.
The unique form of pre-eclampsia, a toxic condition developing in late pregnancy, caused Brenda's blood pressure to spike and liver and kidneys to fail. It forced doctors to deliver her baby Hope nearly 15 weeks premature.
Brenda Levos holds her daughter Hope wile the toddler takes a break from her playtime activities. Colburn Hvidston III/The ForumAt 14 ounces, Hope weighed 1 1/2 ounces more than the smallest known infant to survive premature birth.
Hope endured repeated surgeries her first year. She breathed with the help of an oxygen machines and was taking 13 different medications when she went home the following March.
"It was an extremely difficult time," Brenda says. "It isn't easy to see your child go through that. I had to sign paper after paper saying 'Yeah, you can do that to her.'"
By her first birthday, Hope weighed 14 pounds and had undergone three surgeries for lung-related problems.
At age 2, she had grown to nearly 20 pounds and was breathing without an oxygen mask. By then, the lone sign of her lingering health problems was a tracheostomy, a tube in her neck helping her breathe.
Today, Hope weighs 30 pounds, below her ideal weight, but making steady progress, Brenda says.
"She's growing like crazy, but she's not as big as she should be for her age," she says.
Tom and Brenda once rented a Fargo apartment to be close to Hope's doctors and therapists.
But as Hope's weight increased the number of regular visits from the family's Leonard farmstead to MeritCare Hospital in Fargo dwindled.
"We only went once this summer, other than for regular checkups or flu shots," Brenda says.
Hope still shows minor scars on her chest and under one arm from the seven surgeries she had as a toddler. She stands nearly 3 feet tall, roughly the same size as her 2-year-old sister, Megan.
"People think they're twins because they're the same size," Brenda says.
Hope's speech patterns are a little delayed, her mother says, partially because of the tracheostomy that limited her ability to speak.
"That slowed her down a bit," Brenda says. "But she's within a year of what she should be."
Hope attends preschool classes at Central Cass Public Schools in Casselton and should be able to start on time with her kindergarten class in two years, Tom says.
He calls Hope's first two years "a blur," one the family is glad to be past.
"I feel great that it's all behind us now," Brenda says. "Hope looks like any other child. From looking at her, you wouldn't ever guess there had been any problems with her."
Friday, December 31, 1999 at 7:01PM by Ellen Crawford/The Forum
Hope is steadily gaining weight and breathing on her own, signs that parents Tom and Brenda should soon be able to take her home. Colburn Hvidston III/The ForumHope Levos' parents have quite a story to tell her when she gets older.
She was born the day before Thanksgiving, nearly 15 weeks early. She weighed only 14 ounces and wasn't any bigger than the length of the adult hand.
Now, she weighs 3 pounds. Dr. Ravi Agarwal, director of neonatology at Dakota Heartland Hospital in Fargo, hopes to send her home by March 15. He wants her to weigh 4 pounds 6 ounces before she leaves.
Agarwal thinks she has a 60 percent chance of developing normally and only a 25 percent chance of having trouble learning in school. He said he bases his assessment on her amazing progress: She has no problems with her sight, she hasn't had any bleeding in her head, she doesn't have the major respiratory problems that afflict many premature babies, she more than doubled her birth weight in two months and she is breathing on her own.
"The way I look at it, this is God's Miracle," he said. "Her name is appropriate. She's God's hope."
She weighted only 1 1/2 ounces more than Trent Petrie, the Dilworth boy who was the smallest known infant to survive premature birth. Trent is 11 now.
Hope is Brenda and Tom Levos' first child. The rural Leonard, N.D., couple had been trying to have a baby for about 1 1/2 years when Brenda became pregnant.
She said the early part of her pregnancy was uneventful. By the middle of November she'd gone through morning sickness and was starting to feel good. Her pregnancy was just starting to show and she was getting excited about having a baby. Then she discovered her life was in danger.
Brenda, a 26-year-old designer at Flint Communications Inc. in Fargo, was on her lunch break when she got a sharp pain in her upper abdomen. The pain worried her, so she called her mother for advice. Her mother told her to go see her doctor.
Fargo obstetrician-gynecologist Bruce Conmy thought Brenda was a little dehydrated and prescribed two bags of fluid intravenously. Brenda said she was so dehydrated that her veins had shrunk and the nurse couldn't get the needle into her arm. When she started throwing up, Conmy hospitalized her.
That night she had an ultrasound and other tests. She thought she simply was in the hospital for observation. The next morning she found Conmy sitting by her bed when she awoke.
He informed her she would have to have a cesarean section. Thinking that her medical problems weren't serious, she asked when he thought she should have it. He told her he'd scheduled it in 30 minutes.
"I didn't realize how serious the situation was," Brenda said.
Her blood pressure was up and her liver was starting to shut down, she said.
She spent a week in the hospital after Hope was born, then was back soon after she went home because she caught a cold from her husband.
For Tom, also 26, it was a very scary time. He would visit Brenda, then check on Hope in the neonatal intensive care unit. Then he'd report back to Brenda on how Hope was doing.
Now that Brenda is back at work, she and Tom have worked out a schedule for spending time with Hope. Brenda is there two hours at lunch time and Tom goes after work. He has about a half-hour alone with Hope before Brenda joins them at the end of her work day.
They're only allowed to hold Hope about five minutes per day, so they take turns.
Bad weather has kept them from getting to the hospital a few times. Brenda said that on those days they make a lot of calls to the staff caring for Hope.
"It's hard leaving your baby in the hospital," Brenda said. "But as good as she is, there's no way we could give her the care she gets here."
The couple said they have a good insurance policy that is covering the cost of Hope's care.
While waiting for Hope to grow stronger, her parents have been working hard to turn part of their old farm home into a nursery.
"We really hadn't started," Brenda said. "We thought we had three months to go."
Tom said Hope was on of the names they thought about naming their baby. When se was born, he knew it was the right one.