Hope delivered: Baby conceived to cure Katie is born

BY BETH WHITEHOUSE | beth.whitehouse@newsday.com

"It's a boy!" says obstetrician Brian McKenna.

At 5 p.m. on May 4, 2005, Christopher Thomas Trebing -- at nine pounds, one ounce, the biggest of the three Trebing children -- enters the world at St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown.

"Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?" McKenna asks Steve.

"No," Steve answers, too afraid to do anything that might diminish the collection of the cord blood.

McKenna snips it. He holds the severed cord and extracts its blood -- the life force they all hope will conquer Katie's Diamond Blackfan anemia. It fills a heavy plastic collection bag.

"This is great!" McKenna says. "You're going to have a big bag. One of the biggest collections I've ever seen."

The bag goes into a box lined with bubble wrap to be picked up by a medical courier and shipped to Viacord, a storage facility in Kentucky, until the Trebings decide whether Katie will have a bone marrow transplant.

Steve is leery about the health of his newborn son. After what he and Stacy went through at Katie's birth, an easy delivery seems too good to be true. He wants proof Christopher doesn't have Diamond Blackfan anemia, like his older sister. He wants doctors to draw Christopher's blood and check it. Stacy talks him out of it.

Family time with new baby

"Prince Christopher," an elated Stacy says later of her new son. "Cal moves up to King."

Katie, now 2½, and Calvin, now 5, meet their new brother in his hospital layette. Other members of Stacy's and Steve's extended families arrive; nurses come in and say, "We want to see the miracle baby."

For the first few months after Christopher's birth, the Trebings focus on being a happy family of five. Stacy feels the instant bond she'd felt with Calvin and Katie; she melts when Christopher looks at her. Everything that came before to orchestrate Christopher's birth, all the effort, all the medicine, all the science, all seems moot.

Christopher gets so big so fast that Steve and Stacy nickname him "Bubba." He seems to cry only when hungry, and even that is more whimper than demand. There are no nights spent pacing the hallways holding an inconsolable, wailing infant, like there were with Calvin and Katie. Stacy fantasizes about having a fourth child.

Doctor urges transplant

Four months after Christopher's birth, Stacy and Steve take Katie to her regular appointment with Jeffrey Lipton, her Diamond Blackfan anemia doctor at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park. By now, Katie's had more than 30 blood transfusions and can't go more than a month without one; she sees Lipton every six months to monitor her overall progress. At this visit, Lipton nudges the parents to again focus on her treatment options. They need to make a decision about a bone marrow transplant.

He reminds them Katie's continuing blood transfusions are only a stop-gap. A transplant is the best choice to give her the most normal life, he says.

It's time to act.

"If you ask me who is going to be alive in six months, the child with a transplant or a child with a transfusion, the answer would be the child with transfusions," Lipton tells them.

"But," he adds ominously, "if you ask me who will be alive in 30 years, the likelihood would be the child with the transplant."

He mentions a study that sobers the Trebings: only 57 percent of transfusion-dependent Diamond Blackfan patients are alive at 40.