RamblingRosa, even with her lies about conception the scan would have dated the pregnancy and NNU nurses know the age of a baby by looking at them:
"Are you sure you were only 31 weeks? Her ears are too well formed for 31 weeks" (NN Nurse to me about Tink)
They have growth charts that the baby will be on from birth and will be able to see where they are on that, the amount of fat the baby has on it (too much on that one), how well formed it is and so on. There is also a blood test and if there is any ambiguity on the age of the baby they can perform this test which is very accurate. All that aside they don't treat all babies the same just because of their age, they follow the baby and do what their medical needs call for. Tink was breathing at birth and they allowed her to for quite some time, during her first night they realised she was breathing much too fast and put her on a ventilator. As she only needed the ventilator to slow her down and teach her the right rate she was off of it by the end of the day. The incubators have their temperature changed on a regular basis to see if the baby can hold it's temperature, when they get it down to a certain temperature they're moved into a bed with a heated mattress, they carry on doing that till they're in a goldfish bowl.
The baby is about two weeks old now, born at 32 weeks so 34 weeks. She should be doing a lot better by that age for a baby who didn't have a bad start (you can see the difference in the NNU between PreE babies and premature labour babies). Even if they were holding her back because mum says she's younger (which as I've explained is very unlikely) she should be a lot further on than she is. I know 28 weekers who were out of the incubator by 31 weeks (not sure when they were out because they were out before I met them) and even in the early stages of being taught to breastfeed.
My first premature labour (vaginal birth) I was out of it, I'd gone into that primal place you sometimes hear about and was too much in denial. When they brought the G&A out I was even worse
My second premature labour (Crash Section at fully dilated and already delivering) I was actually quite with it, I wasn't allowed any drugs ("You may need a GA") and just sat up on the bed chatting, apart from when I had a contraction, I guess it may have changed if I'd been allowed to continue - I had, after all, been at the theatre with my first until the contractions started to come regularly.