"My blood pressure was out of control. The staff called Danville and told them I was coming. After I was admitted, doctors discovered that my liver was shutting down. The only way to stop it was to deliver my babies. They couldn't even wait for my husband to get there. He arrived while I was in the operating room," Shelly remembers.

With critically low birth weights -- Lauren weighed just under one pound, while Lindsey barely topped ¾ pound -- both girls were given a 50/50 chance of survival.

"In this country, doctors consider 23 weeks the edge of viability for a newborn. These little girls were born at 24 weeks, and both were extremely small and seriously ill from the beginning," explains Lauren Robbins-Johnson, MD, a board-certified neonatologist at Janet Weis Children's Hospital.

Sadly, the fight for life was too overwhelming for little Lindsey, who succumbed to complications of her birth after five difficult days. But despite her fragile beginning, Lauren would pull through after 105 days of urgent medical care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Janet Weis Children's Hospital.

"They were both so tiny when they were born. I clearly remember the night we lost Lindsey. The doctor promised my husband and I that our other baby would go home. At that point, we found her assurances hard to believe," Shelly recalls.

Lauren suffered from many of the common complications associated with extreme prematurity -- respiratory distress syndrome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, intraventricular hemorrhage, multiple infections and more. She spent the first week of her life on a high-frequency ventilator because her lungs were not fully developed. After a medical setback two weeks after birth, doctors placed her back on the high-frequency ventilator for breathing support. Finally, her lungs gained strength, and Lauren was switched to a conventional ventilator and then CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), a transitional therapy, to help her breathe.

Because her immune system had not fully matured, Lauren battled numerous respiratory and blood infections during her long hospitalization. Her frail little body was infused with multiple doses of intravenous antibiotics. She developed a minor case of intraventricular hemorrhage -- bleeding in the brain -- which occurs in 10 to 25 percent of babies born before the 34th week of pregnancy.

Two months after birth, doctors performed laser surgery to correct retinopathy of prematurity in Lauren's eyes. If untreated, Lauren might have gone blind.

"Lauren didn't grow much during her first month of life. It took a while for her to gain enough weight and strength to go home," notes Dr. Johnson.

Eventually, the family welcomed their daughter home, but Lauren's long journey was far from over. Doctors discharged her with a monitor for apnea, and she required months of follow-up visits to various specialists, who observed her medical needs and screened for developmental delays.

"We took her to a pediatrician, an apnea clinic, a nutritionist, and a growth and development clinic. She had hearing and vision tests and physical therapy," says Shelly. Lauren's immune system problems have lingered, and she still sees a pediatric infectious disease specialist for shots of a medicine to boost her resistance.

This fall, Lauren begins kindergarten, and she recently enrolled in swimming lessons.

"Our experience with Janet Weis Children's Hospital was very good. The doctors and nurses were so caring and committed to helping our daughter. The most wonderful thing was that I got to bring my baby home," Shelly says.