Adeline Belle 2 days oldRecently, People Magazine spotlighted six micro preemies. It was an attempt to inspire. In the preemie community, it infuriated. Unfortunately, this article portrays the micro preemie road as pretty uneventful. A stay in the NICU, a few steam baths in the tub and all is well. We, who raise these micro preemies beg to differ. The statistics quoted are taken from a cohort of surviving micros in the 80's and state how nearly 90% finished high school and more than half went on to college. The article failed to mention how many didn't make it out of the NICU. In the 80's only the strongest micro preemies would survive. I am positive the statistics would have been much more grim had they included the percentage of babies that were never brought home.
This easily segways to the fact that more babies are surviving with the progression of science and technology. Some of these babies would have not survived in the 80's and most likely suffer from a disablility today. If these same babies have escaped a diagnosis, they are certainly traveling with Adeline on her "not so smooth road" of prematurity.
I think that People Magazine had good intentions but covering a topic such as prematurity/micro prematurity isn't something that can be done in a brief article. Yes, I want to hear stories of hope. I want to hear them but don't necessarily think that they need to shower down on society. I scoured the Internet for stories similar to that of my babies in order to find hope and finding these six grown preemies would have lifted my spirits. However, feeding these slightly skewed stories to society only undermines the road of my girls. Most micro preemies don't live a normal life - plain and simple. Being born under two pounds isn't easy, the NICU isn't a mere hospitalization and steam baths don't fix chronic lung disease.
Possibly spotlighting one micro preemie and their very precarious road in the NICU and thereafter could have been a better way to go. This might be the way to get society to understand that babies like mine aren't assumed to live and most certainly are not expected to live a normal life. The odds are stacks against a micro preemie, not for a micro like People Magazine portrayed.
Click here for the article
