'Thanksgiving miracle' baby from Long Island now a thriving adult

That first Thanksgiving with baby Gina, they celebrated with family and an oxygen machine.

She had come into this world that summer, after only 23 weeks in the womb, so perilously premature that doctors gave her a 30% chance to live. She was a little longer than a pencil and so thin her father’s wedding band fit over her thigh. Newsday, in a story published Thanksgiving Day in 2003, when Gina Marie DeMasi was four months old, called her a "Thanksgiving miracle."

That was 21 years ago. Since then, DeMasi has thrived, growing into a healthy and happy adult. She wears glasses but avoided other serious impairments afflicting some extremely preterm children. She graduated Suffolk County Community College with a 3.9 grade-point average. She's on track to graduate next year from Stony Brook University with an bachelor's degree in English.

"When I tell people I was a pound, two ounces, they’re shocked: How can a baby be born that small?" DeMasi said in a phone interview from the family’s West Islip home. "We still talk about it, to this day. The story of the wedding band, the first time my mom put her hand in the [incubator] and my finger wrapped around it."

Pregnancy difficulties

Her parents, Lisa and Rich DeMasi, married in 2000 and hoped for children. But Lisa had part of her cervix removed after a doctor found precancerous cells there. Her shortened cervix had made it difficult to maintain a pregnancy. The couple suffered a devastating miscarriage before Gina’s birth.

Last year in the United States, about 373,000 babies were born at or before 37 weeks, or 10% of all live births. Because organs like the brain and lungs are still developing in the final months of pregnancy, preterm babies account for an outsize portion of infant deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even babies who survive may face problems breathing, seeing and learning. The emotional and financial toll on families can be severe.

When Lisa DeMasi gave birth on July 24, 2003, in the labor room of Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip, she recalled how "usually you would hear a cry, you would hear something. I didn’t hear any of that. I remember them taking her away. I was so nervous and so scared." The "miracle" newborn spent most of her first weeks in an incubator.

"It was a month before I could hold her," Lisa said.

Dr. Prabhu Mehta said that was partly because doctors wanted to minimize the risk of infection, heightened for extremely premature babies.

"A lot of components of the immune system are still developing — the skin is still developing, blood, the lymph system," said Mehta, who directed the Department of Neonatology at what is now formally known as Catholic Health’s Good Samaritan University Hospital when Gina was born and still practices there.

"In those days, you were very cautious," he said. 

Improved technology

In the decades since Gina DeMasi's birth, doctors have developed a better appreciation of "kangaroo care," or skin-to-skin contact with a mother, Mehta said. Medical technology has also improved, he added, as have the social support resources hospitals offer parents.

Mehta keeps a copy of a photograph published with the 2003 Newsday story about Gina in his home office and has kept tabs on his former patient. Gina's many achievements "made me feel proud," he said. "I think all the physicians and nurses in the unit felt very proud."

Lisa DeMasi, now 58 and working the grocery section of Target in Bay Shore, befriended other parents, some with premature babies, who took hope from her family's story. Some had seen the Newsday story. Others she met in the hospital.

"They had that scared look," she said. "You’re afraid to walk over to the incubator, afraid to touch ... That scared, unknowing look was the same as I had."

Rich DeMasi, 55, the maintenance crew lead for East Northport schools, said Gina had been shaped by her early experiences. "She wasn’t a cryer," he said. "She was a good baby girl and she was strong. You could see that she had fought. She had to have."

All these years later, he said, "sometimes me and my wife, we see people that have kids, and we feel some people don’t understand sometimes how easy they really have it. Until you’re really in a situation like that ... you don’t think of these things."

The DeMasis will celebrate this Thanksgiving, like Gina’s first, with Rich’s brother and his family in East Islip. It is their tradition, before eating, for each family member to say a few words of thanks.

The English major has put some thought into this. "I’m grateful for my family," Gina said. "I’m grateful for my health, I’m grateful I’m the way that I am."