STORY BY

Liz Bennett

When tiny Zachary Jackson was born 3 months ahead of schedule, he weighed less than 2 pounds. Chronic lung disease kept him on a ventilator in the neonatal ICU at Memorial Hermann Hospital. Then, when he was 3 weeks old, power failures from Tropical Storm Allison shut down his life support machines. But he held on. He spent months tethered to monitors that watched his every breath, measured every beat and recorded each rhythm of his too-young life.

"It was extremely hard for me to leave him every night," recalls Yamile Jackson, Zachary's mother. "One time I told my husband, 'I wish I could cut off my hand and leave it with Zachary."

Instead, Jackson - who has a Ph.D. in industrial engineering - has done the next best thing. She has designed a pillow that mimics the look and feel of a human hand and forearm that soothes and provides support for infants when their mothers can't be with them.

The result is a glove-like design called a "Zaky." Named after her son, now a healthy 3-year-old, it's been so popular that several neonatal intensive care units in the Texas Medical Center are now using it. And it is catching on in a big way.

"I think it's great," says neonatologist Fernando R. Moya and professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. "It makes babies feel that someone is with them and makes parents feel more involved.

"Parents of premature babies can feel so excluded," he explains. "Babies are often in incubators for long periods, sometimes so sick that parents can't hold them. Sometimes we can't have parents in the room because we're doing procedures or surgery. And it can be a frustrating experience."

The Unsinkable Zachary

But more than frustration was involved for the parents of Zachary and 78 other preemies at Memorial Hermann. In mid-June, 2001, when Zachary was 3 weeks old, Tropical Storm Allison slammed into Houston, flooding the hospital and cutting off power to the machines keeping him and all the other babies alive.

How Zachary and all the other patients at the hospital survived is such a dramatic story that Reader's Digest sent a reporter to cover it. He wrote about Yamile's and husband Larry's frantic rush to the hospital. He also wrote about Yamile cradling Zachary on her chest with nurses helping him breathe for four hours until he could be sent by ambulance to one of the 22 other neonatal ICUs throughout the state.

The evacuation took place over a period of about 14 hours, recalls Moya, "and I saw what the human spirit can achieve. The Jacksons and other parents were helping, hands on, to keep their babies warm, to feed them."

Baby Zachary survived that ordeal, but he still spent several more months in the hospital. His mother kept a close watch, noticing that nurses rolled towels and blankets or used stuffed animals to comfort him and the others. This seemed to give the infants a sense of security and support. But Yamile Jackson yearned for more contact with her baby, wishing somehow she could have more of a hand in caring for him.

That desire inspired her to create the "Zaky." It's made of anti-pilling fleece which makes it soft, flexible and washable, and it can be used over, under or around the baby. "It helps if the mom sleeps with it to give it her scent so the baby will feel and smell something familiar," adds Jackson, who has established a company to market and sell the product (www.zakeez.com).

The Zaky Glove was also the subject of a research paper presented at the International Industrial Ergonomics and Safety Conference in May, 2004.

Meanwhile, the neonatal nurse who attended the delivery of Zachary – Anderson Moya – has become a close friend of the Jacksons. "Anderson was like an angel," recalls Jackson. "She was always there, taking care of Zachary during the flood and during both of his major surgeries. Then when he came home Anderson would come every day and visit when she wasn't working."

Anderson also happens to be the wife of Fernando Moya, and the two have become Zachary's godparents. (The Moyas are also the parents of a new
8-pound baby of their own, Arrison Abrigal, and Moya has taken a paternity leave from the hospital to spend more time at home.)

"The heroes of this story are Zachary and his mother," Moya says. But Yamile Jackson just feels like she was keeping a promise to God.

"If you let me go home with Zachary, I'll help babies," she said in a prayer ceremony at the hospital when the neonatal unit was reopened after the flood.

"And that's what I'm doing."

Last Updated: 7-22-2004

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