The pain began near the end of Meagan Cunningham’s second trimester.

“This is my first child, so I didn’t know if it was normal pain or something to check into,” said the mom from one of two 2015 Suffolk March of Dimes’ March for Babies ambassador families, baby Thomas bouncing on her knee.

Cunningham, an academic coach with Suffolk Public Schools, said her doctor told her everything was fine, they were just growing pains, go home and take a rest.

Meagan and husband Matthew thought rest would come more easily beachside, so they hit the road for a week at Nags Head.

But they didn’t get to feel the sand between their toes. The day they arrived, the pain grew worse and Meagan Cunningham was admitted to The Outer Banks Hospital.

“Those pains were contractions,” she said Tuesday, telling the story at the family’s Smithfield home.

“When we got to Nags Head, there was a lot of pain and I was bleeding, and that’s when I decided I needed to go to the emergency room.”

The doctors in Nags Head, Cunningham said, wanted to fly her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, next to The Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.

But then they discovered her cervix was already dilated to 10 centimeters. With Thomas on his way, an Outer Banks delivery was deemed preferable to a mid-air one.

Cunningham said she was told the Nags Head hospital didn’t have the equipment or personnel to keep her premature baby alive once it was out. So she waited 3-½ hours for CHKD’s Neonatal Transport Team.

“Meanwhile, the contractions were coming every one to two minutes,” she recalled.

When the CHKD team arrived, the go-ahead for delivery was given. Thomas would be taken to the children’s hospital in Norfolk by road ambulance, inside an incubator.

Straight after the delivery, Cunningham didn’t know if her baby was alive or not. “They immediately started working on him,” she said.

Before they put Thomas in the ambulance, paramedics wheeled him into Cunningham’s room in an Isolette incubator. She said he was hooked up to a ventilator and IV.

It was June 29, 2014. Meagan Cunningham had expected to give birth at Suffolk’s Sentara Obici Hospital around Oct. 10. Thomas, 15 weeks early, weighed just 1 pound 7 ounces.

“My husband and I knew he was going to be small, but were thinking 3 to 4 pounds,” Cunningham said. “His skin was translucent and sticky, because it was still undeveloped. His eyes were still closed. He was just 12 inches long.

“We only got to see him for a few minutes, then they took him to Norfolk. I was released the following day.”

After 105 days, Thomas went home from the neonatal intensive-care unit on his actual due date. He had received breathing treatments for 2-½ months, heart surgery at two weeks, eye surgery and “a lot of blood transfusions,” Cunningham said.

“They thought he had an intestinal infection, which is life-threatening, a couple of weeks before coming home,” she said. “Fortunately he didn’t have to have surgery — the antibiotics treated the infection.”

Thomas has no problems with his brain, “which is a miracle,” Cunningham said. “Right now, he doesn’t have any problem that we know of.”

Like other preemies, Thomas has two ages. From the day he was born, he’s 9 months old. But from the day he was supposed to born, he’s 5 ½ months.

Meagan Cunningham said she and her husband rotated on and off at CHKD, advocating for Thomas. She believes the experience brought them closer together.

They still don’t know why Thomas came early. Meagan Cunningham said people at the hospital told her it could have been caused by the changing air pressure as Hurricane Arthur approached; it arrived at the Outer Banks four days after Thomas.

But that doesn’t explain the pain she was enduring before they decided to take a week to relax by the beach.

Meagan Cunningham said she has always walked in the March for Babies, which raises awareness and funds to help mothers have full-term pregnancies and healthy babies, but she didn’t understand the annual event’s importance until now.

She and her husband were honored when they were asked to be ambassadors, she said. “We were so thankful for the research done by March of Dimes that saved his (Thomas’) life.”

The event is scheduled to be held at Constant’s Wharf on April 25 from 10 a.m. Registration is at 9 a.m.

Registrations can be made online at www.marchofdimes.org. For more information, call 361-0000.