Good luck and godspeed tiny little micro baby.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Father to a baby born at 1 pound, 4 ounces (580 grams for those who don't know freedom units). Wife had preeclampsia and baby had to come out at 26 weeks (a little over 3 months early).
Obviously this is not common, but it's far from the first time my hospital has dealt with that kind of thing. Our daughter has had her share of complications and specialists we've had to see. There are still some developmental delays, but nothing we're expecting long-term. It's been a HELL of a ride, no doubt, but she's coming close to her second birthday and overall doing great!
Feel free to ask me anything you'd like about the experience. Although one NICU doctor said it best that every parent in this situation has the same 3 questions:
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Will they survive? (in our case, yes)
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Will they be normal? (As normal as an offspring raised in our house can be... Eventually)
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When can they come home? (Ours did about a month after due date, 4 months and 4 days after birth)
Good to luck to that poor kid being likely to have a lifetime of health issues.
It may be an unpopular opinion, but saving extremely low birth weight babies is only uplifting for the parents. It's a terrible sentence for the baby. Just look up health issues associated with low birth weight. They can pop up at any time in the person's life, from infanthood to late adulthood.
/opinion of a sickly person who was born low weight
My wife had an otherwise completely heathy and normal pregnancy that ended in an “unexplainable” premature birth at 25 weeks 4 days gestation, resulting in a baby born at 930 grams who stayed in the NICU for 100 days and now at 22 months she is reaching or exceeding the health benchmarks for full-term babies her age. The power of modern medicine grows every year. It has come a very long way even in the past 10. The doctors told us there was absolutely nothing we could’ve done differently and I certainly hope my child doesn’t come to me in 20 years and tell me that they’d rather we just gave up.
/opinion of an extremely relieved and proud parent of a child who is clearly very happy to exist.
I'm very happy for you and your family. That said, your child is clearly still a child and you won't know for decades whether or not the low birth weight had an impact on its health.
Just like I wouldn’t know for decades the fact that I grew up with autism that was undiagnosed until 32 years old, was sexually assaulted at 10, and at the direction of the cult my parents raised me in was beaten regularly resulting in CPTSD, all of which I’m still unwrapping in therapy every week. I still push through the pain and the anguish because life is beautiful and it’s my choice every day to continue.
The one thing I thank my parents for above all else is for having me and giving me the choice to push through that pain every single day. Not comparing situations at all but I’ll be there for my kid every single day of their journey and - if they should look me in the eye and tell me it’s all too painful then I will help them find a way to make it easier or make it stop. To insinuate I should have just given up at some point is just defeatist, pessimistic, and wrong. No child had a choice in coming into this world. We all have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt and the choice to put them down should lie with ourselves as the individual alone and no one else.
Would you prefer to have not survived? Not trying to be snarky; honest question, as I feel conflicted.
Would you prefer it if someone else had lived a healthier life in your place?
It's tough to say. I never wish that somebody else would not survive, and I appreciate the utter heartache that parents and other family would feel at the loss of the child. However, I do expect that such children will suffer more than the average person as a direct result of being kept alive when born at such a low weight and believe that making that decision for them is cruel.
I suppose that means that, at least in these extreme cases where the baby weighs less than three or four pounds, yes, it would be kinder to let the infant die rather than to condemn it to a life of health issues.
Edit: I realize I didn't answer your question directly. Yes, I would have been better off if I had not survived. I'm neutral as to whether or not a future baby would have replaced me.
Most interesting. Thanks for sharing your perspective!
how much is it in dollars?
About 1$ and 34¢ at the current exchange rate (GBP to USD).
1$ and 34¢
Writing it this way instead of $1.34 gives me the heebie-jeebies for some reason
I would think that's a world record! Mind blown. 1lb, 1oz is hard to imagine. My ex and I are small and our 2 babies were 6-7x that size.
And this is why America shows abysmal rates of "babies not surviving". We try to save every one, even if hopeless, and those numbers count against us. (I'm so dumb, what's the word I'm looking for here?)
That is not why we have such bad statistics when it comes to infant mortality.
...because we put too much effort into trying to save them?
Correct. That is not why we have terrible infant mortality rates.
I'm wondering if they meant instead of aborting them sooner they are birthed and helped to survive where some wouldn't. I can't imagine any other way they could being thinking. In simple abortion = no increase to infant death rate vs no abortion = infant death rate
The idea is that if you attempt the riskier patients, you're more likely to fail. That's not the reason for our infant mortality rates being what they are, though. I remember seeing stories about the hospital in Gaza City shutting down, and there were similarly-sized babies in the NICU there too. I believe they were thankfully able to be evacuated into Egypt, but the point is we are not the only country birthing and subsequently caring for babies this size.
Infant mortality
Are you asking if instead of an abortion we are still bringing them to birth and try to save those that we can? The wording is very confusing.