Quote:
Originally Posted by Layla_Z  I found your post offensive. Are you trying to say that it would be better if these children didn't exist? My daughter was born at 24 weeks and weighed a little over a pound and a quarter. She is six now and has no lasting effects except that she is small. To imply that she shouldn't exist because she might have trouble later in life is shameful and offensive. |
My younger son was nearly as premature as your daughter. He almost died a couple of times during his first year; had to have some surgery.
Once, just when I thought we were out of the woods medically speaking, I found him blue in his crib. He was in the PediICU for two weeks that time, while they tried to ascertain whether there was brain damage, and what the extent of it was.
Turned out, there was none. It was a miracle; I had discovered him almost immediately, apparently, after he stopped breathing. A commonplace, mundane miracle, as it turned out: one of the doctors at the hospital told me that this is common. Mothers will often sense that their babies have stopped breathing, even if they're in another room, and find them in time.
He had to be on an apnea monitor for awhile after that, but it never happened again.
By the time he was eighteen months, he was healthy; developmentally, he was on par. He never had another health problem in his life to date.
When he was six- like your daughter- I believed, like you, that he had no lasting effects.
I was correct only from a technical standpoint; nothing medically diagnosable was wrong with him.
I have an older son, too, who was born at term.
I see the difference every day of my life.
I don't know who you are, and don't care whether my words offend you.
Protecting the sensibilities of strangers is not one of my priorities.
If my words scare you, I'm sorry you're scared.
If they don't, I'm glad they don't. You're lucky if your daughter is unscathed, although I suspect it's too soon to know.
Somewhere in all this, there's a syndrome that hasn't been named yet; these children need services. What these services would consist of, I cannot imagine. I only know that they need them. Some form of early intervention.
It seems to me- and this is only the wild, instinctive guess of an uneducated person- that the problem might be with their nervous systems. Some problem so subtle that current technology can not yet detected it.