Today is my due date

[Stanthemann01]

My son is 5 weeks old but was due today. we spent 17 days in hospital with jaundice, low weight gain and low temperature issues. At 10 days he was diagnosed with congenital hypothyroidism. Although he's doing better, he's only 3.5oz heavier than at birth. My outreach worker said he would have been a seven pounder if I'd gone to term. I know it's stupid, but I keep having waves of sadness about everything that has happened and I worry that he'll always be tiny.

[AbbeyRoadCrossing]

I felt very sad / weird on our due date, I think it's normal. In fact, I've got DS's first birthday coming up and have mixed feelings about that. It's a difficult one to explain to others.
It takes a long time to come to terms with what happened but it does get easier. DS had jaundice, weight loss, feeding trouble and still is a bit funny about temperature but it gets better. He's now the biggest baby after being the smallest - I get people do a double take if they haven't seen us since he was tiny!

[FallenOnHardTimes]

I'm sorry you're having a hard day today . Due dates and birthdays can be hard :(

It sounds like you've had a really rough time, and it's ok and normal to feel down when things have been so difficult. It's all still really recent and must feel very raw. Give yourself permission to feel like crap today, and give your DS an extra big cuddle. I think most prem mums worry about their DC's size when they are small (and pay no attention to your outreach worker's comment about what could have been. How would she know?), but most of them do seem to end up within the normal range, though obviously I don't have the gift of omniscience either :)

How are you doing otherwise? And how is your DS?

[Stanthemann01]

Thanks both. I'm glad to hear your ds is now big AbbeyRoadCrossing. It's been an ok day really. I read a good blog by a woman who said she wished she had enjoyed her son rather than spending his early days worrying about him. I'm going to try and remember that. I'm fine Fallen. Ds is also fine, a apart from the hypothyroidism and needing to be wrapped up all the time!

[EeyorePigletAndPoohToo]

The good thing though is that he has gained weight. He may just need a little bit of time to catch up following his diagnosis of hypothyroidism, and hopefully now that the diagnosis has been made he will gain weight, even if slowly but surely.

My DS would probably also have been born around the 7lb mark, based on the centime he was born on, but was teenytiny on his due date (he was 16 weeks early and lost weight following his birth, and took 6 weeks even to regain it). He was teeny for a long time, and I began to see it as his 'badge of honour' of everything that he'd been through. Now aged 9 years, he is finally an average weight and height for his age. It may have taken a long time but he got there in the end. In the meantime, his tiny size meant that people did ask a lot of questions about him, but I actually found it quite therapeutic to talk about.

due dates and birthdays can be very emotional. I agree with the above - I spent way too much time worrying about DS and if I could change things, I would have tried to enjoy his first year a lot more. Hope that you are now settling down to life with your newborn DS and are able to enjoy every minute. X