Many Christmas dolls walk and talk, but it’s a walking, talking miracle girl who’s the real gift for one Vicksburg family this Christmas.

Anna Grace Lovins, 2 1/2, barely survived her first Christmas and was very sick for her second.

This year, nothing is keeping her down. She’s ready for the books, Barbie and the Dora the Explorer game she hopes Santa will bring.

“We’re blessed,” said her mother, Angela Lovins, 36. Lovins, her husband Quentin, 31, and all their family and friends believe Anna Grace is a miracle baby.

The Lovinses manage The Loft on Washington Street, a life with plenty of late — or early morning — hours. They live with her mother and father, Mary Jo and Ray Wright, who help care for Anna Grace and her older sister, Mary Claire, 5 1/2.

Lovins was about 27 weeks pregnant with Anna Grace in April 2006, when she suffered a complication known as an abruption of the placenta, an emergency condition in which the placenta begins to separate from the wall of the uterus. It can deprive the baby of oxygen and nutrients.

For Anna Grace, that meant being born three months prematurely.

Mary Claire also was premature — born 6 weeks early — from the same complication. Lovins knew the warning signs and drove herself to the emergency room at River Region Medical Center.

Her Vicksburg obstetrician, Dr. Joe Austin, alerted high-risk neonatal physicians at University Medical Center in Jackson and had her transferred there.

“He’s a very hands-on doctor and likes to deal with his own patients, but he told me they were just not equipped here to deal with a baby this premature,” Lovins said.

Anna Grace weighed just 2 pounds, 5 ounces at birth and spent her first weeks in intensive care, hooked to monitors, tubes and IV lines, and with her tiny arms and legs restrained. She could not breathe on her own but had to be “bagged” — hooked up to a breathing tube — and her skin was so underdeveloped she could not be touched. Even her diapers were just placed under and around her, and not fastened.

While older sister Mary Claire has no lingering effects from her premature birth, Anna Grace’s complications are expected to be life long.

“There is always a chance when they bag them that the pressure of the air going into the body can cause a brain bleed,” Lovins said, explaining that these can range from a mild grade 1 up to a grade 4, the most severe.

Anna Grace suffered a grade 3 on one side of her brain and a grade 4 on the other. One side healed itself, with the blood absorbed back into her body, but the other resulted in a permanent scab-like deposit in a spinal fluid circulatory area in her brain which causes pressure to build up if not drained.

She was told there was a 98 percent chance Anna Grace would have cerebral palsy and/or be mentally impaired. Anna Grace also had to have surgery to insert a drainage shunt into her brain.

For the three months that Anna Grace remained at UMC, Lovins and Wright, her mother, drove to Jackson every day, bringing big sister Mary Claire along. Wright would spend time with Mary Claire, making sure she knew she was loved and cared for while Lovins needed to be with the new baby.

Lovins said she could not have endured those days without her mother’s help, and even now depends on her almost as much.

“They’re a great family,” said Stacy Truesdell, Lovins’ best friend. “Mary Jo has the patience of God. She has more patience than anyone I know.”

Lovins also credited members of St. George Orthodox Church. “Anna Grace was on every prayer list in town. Father John (Morris) came and anointed her with oil before her first surgery, when she was just 2 1/2 weeks old. We have such a strong, strong church family. You know you have the full support of people you have known since you were born.”

Once Anna Grace came home, she continued to be monitored and treated by a neurologist and other specialists. Sometime around last Christmas the family noticed she had stopped growing and was ill and lethargic, making no progress developmentally. She couldn’t keep any food down.

Wright said that it was found that the shunt inserted into her brain to drain spinal fluid had cracked, and its malfunctioning was making her sick. A second brain surgery was scheduled, taking place at the end of February.

Since then, the change has been amazing, the women said. Anna Grace has put on weight, started walking and talks almost nonstop. She loves books and animals and stays busy all day, said Wright.

“The doctors cannot get over it,” said Lovins. “She’s talking, she’s manipulating things, she’s walking, though she was a little unsteady at first and they did tell us she might have problems with balance.”

Miracle baby Anna Grace is well on her way to being ready for preschool. “She’s passed her physical and neurological exams and she shows no sign of slowness,” Lovins added.

According to a 2004 report by the March of Dimes, premature births reached an all-time high in the United States in 2002, with 480,812 cases, or just over 12 percent of live births nationally. It is considered the most serious and costly infant health problem in the country, with annual hospitalization costing more than $13 billion.

Mississippi topped the nation with more than 17 percent of births in 2002 being premature, according to the National Center of Health Statistics.

About 90 percent of babies born at 27 weeks now survive. “This is becoming more and more common, because they can do miracles over there,” Wright said of UMC’s neonatal unit.

“It is amazing,” Truesdell said. “It definitely seems like a miracle and they know it. They don’t take it for granted.”

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgost.com.