From Premature Twins to Water Polo Pros

During National Prematurity Awareness Month, we’re sharing a story that proves that babies can have a bright future even if they are born too soon

Parents who suddenly find themselves with a premature baby—or babies—are often overwhelmed and terrified by the fact that babies born preterm are at risk for more health problems at birth and later in life. Some immediate problems can be serious breathing trouble, bleeding in the brain, seizures, and feeding problems. Premature babies can have long-term health problems, too, like intellectual or developmental disabilities, behavioral challenges, and damage to their lungs, brain, and eyes.

Happily, Jake and Owen Reinke are exceptions to the rule. The identical twins, who were born weighing just over 3 pounds each and spent the first weeks of their life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, are now almost 18 years old. They are healthy, accomplished athletes who both stand over 6 feet tall. Instead of dealing with lifelong ramifications of prematurity and their early hospitalization, they’re just like many other high school seniors and are currently looking around at colleges.

A stressful start

Kristin Reinke had Jake and Owen when she was 30 weeks pregnant. She’d been getting prenatal care through the Stanford Children’s high-risk obstetrics team, under the supervision of maternal-fetal medicine specialist Maurice Druzin, MD, because she has rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease. As part of her care, she had genetic counseling and weekly ultrasounds—one of which set off alarm bells because it showed that there might be fluid on the babies’ brains. Then, at week 24, Kristin started to have contractions.

The doctors carefully watched over Kristin for the next few weeks and gave her steroid treatments, which have been shown to reduce the risk of brain bleeding in preemies, and put her on bedrest. Still, Kristin delivered her sons 10 weeks early—the day after Christmas.

The first few days were complicated. Owen required oxygen for a short time, and both boys needed to be fed through feeding tubes. Thankfully, MRIs showed that neither of them had fluid in their brains. The first two weeks in the NICU were stressful for the new parents, and seeing the babies with peripherally inserted central catheter lines and hooked up to wires was hard. “But the NICU nurses were absolutely incredible and made us feel so comfortable,” says Kristin. “They helped us hold them to our chest and gave them Beanie Babies to have in their incubators.” While it’s incredible to think it now, Owen and Jake were actually the same size as those Beanie Babies at the time.

Playing catch-up

Owen and Jake were soon healthy enough to be transferred to the Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Special Care Nursery at Dignity Health Sequoia Hospital, a Level II (intermediate) neonatal care unit located within the Sequoia Hospital Family Birth Center that’s staffed by doctors and nurses from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. Here, the babies’ care was overseen by the neonatal medicine specialist Katherine McCallie, MD, and as they thrived, Kristin was able to hold them more and more. Three and a half weeks later, the babies were ready to go home.

As toddlers, the boys were small for their age and were late in meeting milestones like walking. “But before we knew it, they were taller than everyone else their age and became these big, healthy kids,” says Kristin. One of the only setbacks they experienced was with reading. When they were in kindergarten and Kristin was told they were behind, she and the boys’ father—who’s a teacher—poured themselves into helping them. “We wanted to make sure they didn’t have any confidence issues that might go along with having a delay,” she says. Constantly reading with them paid off, and Owen and Jake were reading above their grade level by the time they were in fourth grade.

As kids, the twins loved to be active and roughhouse just as much as other little boys. “They were always very physical with each other,” says Kristin. “Observing how they could each dish it out and take it, and seeing them get bigger, gave me the confidence they could physically be OK doing sports. And,” she confesses, “I was also hoping that sports would tire them out.” Owen and Jake naturally took to all kinds of athletics, and when they were 8 years old, they discovered water polo. “It’s not very easy to play this sport, and I like how physically demanding it is,” says Jake. They both play on their school team—one of the best in the country—as well as a Water Polo Club team and have even competed in the Junior Olympics.

The twins share a friend group, and when they’re not training for water polo games, playing football, or golfing, they like to spend time hanging out with their friends, getting dinner, and doing other typical things that teenagers like to do. This includes thinking about what’s next. Jake is aiming to play water polo in college. Owen is recovering from a shoulder injury and is taking time off from the sport. Since they’re close, they agree that going to the same college would be ideal.

Smooth sailing after a stormy start

Being a former preemie means different things to different people. For some preemies, knowing the struggles that they went through, and that their parents went through, when they were newborns has shaped the direction of their lives, like these 24-year-old twins, for example, who are both now pursuing careers in health care as a result of their family’s experience.

As for the Reinke twins, they remain extremely grateful to Stanford Children’s. The brothers have gone a few times to the annual reunion for Stanford Children’s NICU grads, where they’ve been able to reunite with some of the medical team members who cared for them. Other than that, Jake and Owen don’t think too much about their dramatic debut. “I’ve never stressed about how I might have been different if I hadn’t been premature,” says Jake. Owen is on the same page. “We try to not let it affect us. We were told we were premature, but we never felt any different.”

Not having to grapple with, or even consider, the ramifications of being a preemie is cause for celebration—though Kristin fondly remembers the NICU nurses caring for her babies and still appreciates how the nurses perked up their incubators with stuffed animals so many years ago. In fact, she’s kept them all. “I had Beanie Baby–sized kids, and now they are six feet tall,” she says. “Those two Beanie Babies will stay with us forever.”

Learn more about our exceptional care for preemies and infants with critical care needs.