Million-Dollar Babies

Ryan Cole weighed 1 pound 15 ounces when he was born on May 3, 2005, after just 28 weeks in the womb. He spent his first 70 days in a neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, kept alive by an array of specialized ventilators, intravenous feeding pumps, and advanced diagnostic gear, as well as round-the-clock attention from the hospital staff. Like many "preemies," or babies born earlier than 37 weeks, Ryan was a handful. Afflicted with two different brain abnormalities, he threw up constantly, and his parents had to care for him amid a tangled nest of wires that snaked out of his crib, helping him breathe and eat.

One evening, a few weeks after he arrived home, Ryan stopped breathing. His parents, Eric and Andrea, came running when his respiratory monitor sounded an alarm. "We went into his room, and he was turning blue," says Eric. He immediately dialed 911, and when the ambulance reached the family's home in Kensington, Md., Andrea hopped in the back with Ryan, and Eric jumped in his car to follow them to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. At the hospital, doctors hooked Ryan to a machine that helped him breathe and upped his dose of a drug to stimulate lung function. In coming weeks, there would be other life-threatening events, but this time, Ryan was able to return home after one night in the NICU.