"My husband, Shane, and I never once thought of pregnancy as a life-or-death event," Shalini Wittstruck recalls. "Then one day our lives and all our expectations changed."

Shalini and Shane's son, Kieran, was born at 31 weeks, and just 3 lbs., 1 oz. He spent the first month of his life in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU), battling anemia, jaundice, apnea, bradycardia, a heart murmur and a brain cyst. With medical advances supported by the March of Dimes, Kieran pulled through.

Now 5 years old, Kieran still flips expectations on their head. Outside his home near Seattle, he likes to ride his bike and swim. He also is a budding mechanical engineer and is always working on his next great invention. And if that wasn't enough, he even runs his own cat spy agency: MEOWS!

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*story and picture from March of Dimes