Its Wednesday - 25 weeks!

A local hospital has published a study that the did trying to come up with a consensus on treatement (or non-treatment) of VERY premature babies. They looked at the long-term outcomes for babies that were born between 23 and 27 weeks to see how many of them were healthy and developing "normally" at 5 years of age. Less than 25% (of those who survived) were normal at 5 years of age if they were born before the 25th week. The rest had ongoing physical, neurological and developmental issues that ranged from blindness, retardation and cerebral palsy and significant paralysis... often with multiple issues in the same child.

That information led to a hospital wide policy of not recommending recussitation for babies born before 24 weeks... now that doesn't mean they WON'T treat and recussitate these babies if the parents want that... just that they will tell parents that they do not recommend recussitation before 24 weeks.

I think that it is GOOD that they did the study to REALLY examine the long term prognosis of a baby born so prematurely... but I also think that people REALLY need to know what they're in for when they decide to go against recommendations and recussitate an extremely premature baby. This kind of work creates a MUCH clearer set of information for these parents to consider and base their decision on. I have great respect for that.

As for us, we've made it to 25 weeks and in 3 weeks we'll hit the point where-in 98% of babies born will survive with zero complications or on-going health issues. That is a huge milestone, so I guess, as always, I'm just keeping my eyes on the prize.

Luckily the Prilosec I started taking today has REALLY helped the reflux and I was able to eat comfortably all day... which I haven't been able to do in about 4 months without downing handfulls of tumms. I wish they'd told me about this stuff earlier, but I'm glad to have it now. I really don't like to take medication at all when I'm pregnant, but when it started to hurt to swallow and the sore throat from the acid in my esophagus just never went away... I knew the almonds and tumms just weren't cutting it anymore.

Ok... ultrasound update tomorrow! Time to get ice-cream with the boys!

Posted by Lexy at February 1, 2006 08:06 PM