The Eagles Safety Notes The First Birthday Of His Twins With A Donation.
A year ago this weekend, Brian Dawkins, a six-time Pro Bowl safety, was supposed to join Eagles veterans, free-agent signees and draft picks for a post-draft minicamp.
But Dawkins had an excused absence from all minicamps last spring. The man who prides himself on helping young players adapt to life in the NFL had a more important mission at his home in Florida.
The story's happy ending could be seen yesterday at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where Connie and Brian Dawkins, with their recently turned 1-year-old twin daughters, Chonni and Cionni, presented a $10,000 check to aid the hospital's neonatal care unit.
For several months last year, however, life was filled with uncertainty for Connie and Brian as they dealt with the premature births of their daughters. Football was the furthest thing from Brian Dawkins' mind. His normally intense off-season workouts became something he tried to fit in between trips to the hospital and tending to the needs of their two older children, Brian Jr. and Brionni.
Problems In Pregnancy
Connie and Brian had learned during the 2006 season that there would be two new additions to their family, but the pregnancy became a difficult one.
"Any time a woman bleeds during a pregnancy, especially early on, it's not good," Brian said. "That's what happened to us, so we had to go to the doctor and see about that. A little bit after that, she started having contractions, and this was, like, five months into the pregnancy. We knew we were having twins at that point."
Shortly after the Eagles' playoff loss in New Orleans on Jan. 13, 2007, Connie was confined to bed rest by her doctors at Virtua West Jersey Hospital in Voorhees. Her husband learned firsthand just how much she did in a day.
"I had to do everything that my wife did, and whatever I had to do," he said. "I was getting the kids ready for school, getting them dinner, helping them with homework, and I had to make sure my wife was getting fed because she couldn't get out of bed."
Dawkins said he was walking in his wife's shoes.
"I told her I'm sorry, and I meant it, if I had ever neglected her in any way or made her feel like I didn't believe everything that she did. She was stronger than I ever gave her credit for - and I already thought she was strong."
'We Prayed About It'
Connie would need to be strong to get through this ordeal. An ultrasound of the two babies revealed that the younger one, Cionni, had a spot on her heart.
"They didn't know what it was, but they had to tell us that it could be Down Syndrome," Brian said. "We had to decide if we were going to have a test done . . . to see if the baby had Down Syndrome, but the percentage of losing one of the babies was tremendous if you do that. So this was something else on our minds."
They decided to forgo the test.
"We prayed about it . . . and we decided to believe that everything was going to be fine, which it turned out to be," Brian said.
Last spring after doctors allowed Connie to travel, the Dawkins family was back in Orlando, where Brian typically intensifies his off-season workouts with a personal trainer. But last year the workout schedule needed a serious adjustment.
"When we got down to Florida, we were able to have her baby shower, but immediately afterward she started contracting again," Brian said. "This was a little over three months before she was due. The doctors were afraid she was going to have the babies. I had to rush her to the hospital at 3 in the morning. The doctors put her on bed rest again. She had to take medicine that would keep the babies inside and [it] made her feel crummy."
Premature Births
Early on the morning of April 26, Brian got a call at home to come to the hospital in Orlando. Chonni (pronounced chee-Ah-nee) and Cionni (pronounced see-Ah-nee) had entered the world two months premature. Each weighed fewer than four pounds. "Skin and bones" is how Brian Dawkins described their appearance.
"Shortly after they were born, we found out our youngest daughter had a condition called bradycardia," Dawkins said. Bradycardia is a slowing of the heart rate, which is associated with a 15- to 20-second pause in breathing, or apnea.
"I'd be feeding her and sometimes she'd completely stop breathing," he said. "You could see the flat line go across the heart monitor. You'd have to shake her a little bit and she'd give a little gasp and you'd go back to feeding.
"It was heart-wrenching when we went home, because we'd call and ask, 'How'd Cionni do today?' " he said. "They'd say, 'She [stopped breathing] three times today.' You can imagine how that was on my wife. That didn't stop any time soon."
Chonni and Cionni, after 17 days in the Orlando hospital, went home for the first time on May 13 - Mother's Day. The family was together, but Brian Dawkins' mind still was not focused on football. Instead, he was playing the role of night nurse.
"I was trying to make sure [his wife] got back to normal as fast as possible," he said. "I was on the night shift."
That meant Dawkins was awake from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., monitoring Cionni's breathing.
"Then I'd try to work out at noon for an hour with whatever energy I had," he said. " . . . It went on that way until we left Florida and came back up for training camp. I was nowhere close to being prepared for last season."
Trouble In Camp
Dawkins' plan was to use training camp to get into condition. That plan didn't even last a day. He strained his Achilles' tendon on the team's conditioning run and missed the first three weeks of training camp.
In Week 2, Dawkins slammed into Washington Redskins tight end Todd Yoder and had trouble getting off the field. He suffered nerve damage to his neck, which required him to visit a specialist in Oregon.
"That was the scariest thing I've ever been a part of in my career," Dawkins said. "The game that we play in general is a violent game . . . It's such a rugged and aggressive game that I play that I can't play around with my neck. I had to make sure that was where it needed to be. I had doubts in my head that kept creeping up.
"Talking to other guys who had been through the same thing, they'd say, 'Look, this thing takes time.' That's not what you want to hear when your team is struggling."
Dawkins missed five games, and even when he returned, he was not right. He said the only time he felt like himself at all last season was in the Eagles' second game against the New York Giants. He finished the season with one interception, his lowest total since 2003, another injury-shortened season. For just the second time in his career, he failed to record a sack.
"In my working out during the off-season, I'm a stickler in preparing my body for the season, so we do some stuff during my workouts that conditions my body for the wear and tear of the season," Dawkins said. "I believe when you do that, it prevents little things from becoming big things. When you don't do it, that's when those big things happen. Quite frankly, those big things happened because I couldn't prepare my body for the season."
Extra Motivation
Dawkins will turn 35 during the 2008 season. He is in the last year of his contract and he knows there are people who wonder whether it is time for him to call it a career.
"There are certain things you can use [as motivation] during the off-season when you work out, and I'll just use that," he said. "If I need a little extra push, I'll use, 'Oh, you're getting old and people are trying to write you off.' . . . People said I started losing steps at 30, so by this time I shouldn't even be walking. I shouldn't be playing anymore because I've lost so many steps. I don't see that. I don't feel that."
Dawkins believes he is about to have another bounce-back season and he is looking forward to taking to the field tomorrow while his twin daughters remain at home with their mother, brother and sister.
Dawkins and his wife chose to make a donation to CHOP's neonatal unit to help premature babies in the Philadelphia area the way the Florida hospital helped their twins.
"They're healthy," the proud father said. "They're not walking yet, but both of them are what you call cruising. They can pull themselves up and walk around holding onto your finger or an object. Both of the girls are getting big and sleeping through the night."
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/20080502_Dawkins_celebrates_a_real_victory.html
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