OLD TOWN – Maine has had a strange winter, one with shockingly little snow and cold weather until recently. December and January were disappointments to skiers, ice fishermen and snowman-builders, but not to Abbey Talon.

Twenty months ago, Abbey was born premature. She is highly susceptible to colds, and the mild winter has been kind to her.

“It’s been really good,” her father, Mike Talon, said. “The cold weather can trigger the lung problems.”

Add to her good health the fact that she has been named this year’s local March of Dimes Ambassador Child, and it has been a banner winter for Abbey.

Abbey lives in Old Town with her parents, Marion and Mike, and her 4-year-old brother, Gabe. She was born eight weeks early and weighed just 3 pounds 5 ounces at birth.

“She was an amazing little girl, lying there in that incubator,” Marion said. “It’s a hard way to start when you’re hooked up to all this stuff and you’re so susceptible. It’s made us all stronger and brought us all together.”

Today, Abbey is an active, healthy child. She has come a long way from the newborn who needed to stay in the hospital for 22 days after birth.

Mike has a simple description of Abbey’s typical activities: “Running like crazy and talking up a storm.”

But Abbey still weighs just under 19 pounds and wears 12-months-size clothes. The memory of her premature birth has not yet vanished.

“We’re pretty thankful that technology is so great,” Mike said. “If she had been born 20 or 30 years ago …”

Care for the littlest babies has certainly come a long way in recent decades.

“Babies that were born premature 35 years ago were simply wheeled into the back of the nursery,” Gene Staffiere, director of the local March of Dimes, said. “And they waited for them to die.”

According to Staffiere, premature births are up 30 percent since 1985. But preventive measures are also on the rise.

Staffiere said that women of child-bearing age should take multi-vitamin folic acid pills in addition to eating healthy foods and not smoking. Avoiding or minimizing stress also can help prospective mothers avoid premature labor.

Because Abbey is such a young ambassador, her mother will speak in her place at March of Dimes engagements. There will be a number of community events in the coming months devoted to raising awareness of premature birth.

The March of Dimes business luncheon will be held at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, at the Oriental Jade in Bangor.

The breakfast kickoff will be at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, March 8, at the Heritage Community Center in Brewer.

And WalkAmerica will be on Sunday, May 6, at the Brewer Auditorium. Registration for WalkAmerica begins at 8 a.m. and the walk at 9 a.m.

For families with premature babies, the concerns can seem endless. There are expensive medicines and feeding tubes and hospital visits to contend with. But not all of the concerns are quite so dire, as the Talons learned.

“It’s not easy to find preemie clothes,” Mike said. “You learn as you go, that’s for sure.”

The Talons have been able to see Abbey through her premature birth all the way to good health, and now they see Abbey’s ambassadorship as an opportunity to help other similar families in the community.

“There’s been a few bumps in the road, but we have some great specialists in the area,” Marion said. “We’re very lucky.”

For more information on the March of Dimes and area activities, call Gene Staffiere at 989-3376 or e-mail gstaffiere@marchofdimes.com.