Fighting for Preemies

Did you know today is National Prematurity Awareness Day?

I am extremely lucky--even though Matthew was born almost 4 weeks early, by some miracle his lungs were fully developed and he suffered no ill effects from being born early (unless you count the fact that he didn't have nipples yet...apparently nipples don't develop until like 38 weeks gestation--bet you didn't know that.) However, he, like Mimi, did suffer from a serious form of jaundice and had to be in the NICU for 3 days. To this day--and that was over 11 years ago--I remember the tiny preemies in their incubators and my heart goes out to anyone who has to go through that.

I add my voice to the over 400 other bloggers who are posting today about the Fight for Preemies. While I was lucky enough to have 2 healthy kids, I know how many others out there are not so lucky. Or who had some really close calls, like my best friend Sadie. At her 20 week ultrasound, the doctor told her everything looked great and was walking out of the room when she happened to glance back over her shoulder. The ultrasound tech had taken one last pass over my friend's abdomen before turning it off and something about the shot caught the doctor's eye. She told the tech hold on, go back. She pressed my friends abdomen and realized with horror that her cervix was almost fully dilated on the inside--the uterus-facing side. Had Sadie gotten up off that table and walked out of that office she would have given birth within a few days and there's no way her baby would have survived.

She spent the weekend on bed rest at home, then returned on Monday for another ultrasound. The dilation was worse and they hospitalized her immediately, where she remained on inverted bed rest for 2 weeks. At about 22 weeks the doctor performed a cerclage--sewed her cervix closed--and sent Sadie home, where she remained on bed rest for 12 more weeks. When she gave birth to full-term baby girl, the doctor confided that when she'd done the cerclage, her cervix had been 100% effaced and dilated and the baby's tiny, tiny feet--encased in the amniotic sac--were protruding into her vagina! The doctor said that there was basically no chance the baby would survive but she had just sewn her up and not said anything, not wanting to upset her. But miracles do happen, and that baby is a healthy, happy kid today, thanks to that doctor's perseverance and Sadie's almost 20 weeks of bed rest.