On any given day, the tidy house on Pheasant Drive is completely chaotic.

Ringing the doorbell encourages loud barking from a tiny, overprotective dachshund and intermittent yips from a poodle mix.

The pitter-patter of bare feet and the thwap of arms hitting side tables, a baby's garbled pseudo-speech and a mother trying to calm everyone down adds to the confusion as the nanny shoves the still-barking dogs outside.

The mother, Kerry, is lovely. Her stylish haircut, black leather boots and heart pendant necklace show the time she takes putting herself together, despite a hectic work and family schedule.

The little boy, Hayden, is frightened by strangers but scared of little else. After a short bout of shy interaction with mom and nanny, he happily bounds around the living room, showing everyone his bike, his dark brown eyes moving quickly from person to person.

He's lucky to have a bike and a home and a loving family. He almost didn't make it.

You can't tell now, but Hayden Hruska was born too early. A Life Flight patient while still in the womb, he spent the first two months of his life far from home in a neonatal infant care unit, fighting to survive.

After trying for over a year to conceive using fertility drugs, George and Kerry Hruska decided to adopt. Hayden's birth mother had come to stay with the Hruskas in September 2005, during her sixth month of pregnancy. Everyone expected the baby sometime after Christmas, but "fate had a different plan," Kerry Hruska said.

Three months early, the birth mother went into labor at the Hruska's home in Casper. Moms and baby were flown to Denver, where doctors worked to keep Hayden from coming.

"We didn't know what would happen," Hruska said. "They Life Flighted us to Denver on a Thursday and held us off as long as they could, but Hayden was born that Saturday."

The birth mother wasn't sure the Hruskas would still want the baby. After all, they'd planned to adopt a fully-formed baby, and that wasn't going to be the case any more.

"She felt very guilty that maybe he wasn't perfect," Hruska recalled. "She even apologized, and we just told her that it didn't matter and Hayden was going to be Hayden and he was coming, and we'd do what we had to do."

When Hayden was born on Oct. 1, 2005, he weighed only 2 pounds, 6 ounces. Hruska spent seven weeks in Denver while her husband traveled back and forth to Casper for work.

"It was very difficult," Hruska said. "There were a lot of families that the parents had to go back to work or go back and take care of other children and come visit on weekends. It was really heartbreaking for them, and even for me having to see that."

Now, Hayden is just "a crazy, normal 2-and-a-half-year-old," Hruska said. The family - complete with "little surprise miracle" baby Weston, who was born to the apparently not-so-barren couple last year - is busy but happy.

"There's just so much that can happen (with premature babies)," Hruska said. "We're very lucky."

Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0589 or megan.lee@trib.com

March for Babies

The Hruskas will walk today in the Casper event for March of Dimes' March for Babies (formerly WalkAmerica) to celebrate the life son Hayden had to fight for.

"Our son is here in large part because of the research and efforts of the March of Dimes," Kerry Hruska said.

The March for Babies event takes place at 9 a.m. today and begins as a one-mile parade from City Park to downtown, then back to the park. A children's festival will follow the march.

Jesse Toth, Community Director for the Wyoming State Chapter of the March of Dimes, said that 70 percent of money raised from the march will go directly to Wyoming families dealing with prematurity and birth defects. The other 30 percent will fund national prevention research.

Last year, the Casper march raised about $100,000, and other marches around the state raise an additional $150,000. Marches nationwide raised $117 million last year.