Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Premature birth

Connect with others and find premature birth support.

Talk to me about your prem babies grown up?

53 replies

Valdeeves · 29/01/2014 18:04

Have you noticed anything different about them compared to their peers as they approach school age? Are they on track?

OP posts:
RueDeWakening · 05/03/2014 22:24

This has been a fab thread to read, thank you Thanks

DS1 was born at 31 weeks and weighed 3lbs8oz, and is a surviving identical triplet (brothers died in utero due to TTTS). He's now 4 and due to start school in September. He had a fairly uneventful ride through NICU with only minor bleeds, suspected sepsis, and lingering jaundice. And a failed hearing test, but he passed second time round!

Like many others have mentioned he's emotionally immature. He was wheezy and had an inhaler from age 1-3 but has outgrown that now. He also has very slightly delayed speech - he was assessed by SALT as about 6-12 months behind, but not behind enough to warrant any input from them Hmm

I had never considered his emotional immaturity could be related to his prematurity, that's definite food for thought.

Looking back, I have no idea how we coped for the first 6 months. He had to be fed on a 3 hourly schedule, but took almost 2 hours for each feed - up to 1 hr BFing then a top up of prescription formula to make sure he got enough calories in. He also came home needing to be kept in a room heated to 22 degrees C - we had to wean him down onto normal temperatures over a 3 week period. Since he's a winter baby, our heating bill went through the roof.

Physically, he walked just after his first birthday, so about 10 months corrected. Once he started moving, he never stopped (and still hasn't!). He continues to amaze me with how well he's doing, and as others have said, if you didn't know he was prem then you would probably never suspect it.

10storeylovesong · 19/03/2014 11:17

This reply has been withdrawn

Withdrawn at poster's request

zoemaguire · 19/03/2014 11:30

Ds 26 weeker. He's tiny (0.4th centile for corrected age) but otherwise apparently doing really well. He starts school in September. Most people would say he's entirely unaffected by his early start but I'm not so sure. For instance he has great fine motor skills but does not do any representative drawing. Obviously that's a very small example, but my gut feeling is that he'd be a very different child if he'd been born at term. He's brilliant just as he is, so that's not a bad thing from my perspective, but I think his start in life had very profound effects that are just not immediately obvious. After all they go through, how could it be otherwise? Time will tell I guess. Like someone above said, while it is great reading success stories, the disability stats for very early prems are frightening.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page