I am a 40 year old mother who gave birth to 4 premature babies. One at 34weeks, one at 26 weeks and two at 32 weeks. My oldest son(34 wks) is now a sophomore at KU with excellent grades. He has had no problems except at birth, with maturing his lungs and learning to eat and breath at the same time. Son #2 and daughter # 3, a senior in high school and 7th grader. Both of them are honor students in advance placement classes. They both went thru the same issues my older son did at birth and none of them stayed in the hospital longer than a week. My oldest daughter, however, born @26 weeks does have Quadraplegic Cerebral Palsy. She stayed in hospital 3 months mainly at the time because she was so small. The CP diagnoses didn't come until she was about 6 months old. Needless to say notALL preemies have lifetime issues but some do. I have yet to be told why all my babies were early. I have never drank, smoked or lived a lifestyle harmful to pregnancy.
Preemies' Problems May Last a Lifetime
As a new study paints a dark picture for babies born before 37 weeks, an expert offers advice about having a healthy pregnancy.
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
Today nearly 13 percent of the more than 4 million babies born in the United States each year arrive prematurely—which means moms deliver them earlier than 37 weeks into their pregnancies. That's up from 10.6 percent in 1990. That may not sound like such a big deal, but the younger babies are at birth, the greater their risk of medical conditions such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation. In the long term, premature birth can also affect education level attained and even income earned as an adult. The increase in premature births is due, in part, to the boom in infertility treatments, which can increase the number of multiple births. Improved technology that keeps more premature babies alive is also a factor. "If more babies survive, you have more complications," says neonatologist Maureen Hack, professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found dramatically higher rates of cerebral palsy (9.1 vs. 0.1 percent) among babies born at 23 to 27 weeks compared to babies born at 37 weeks or later. According to the study, which looked at the health records of 903,402 Norwegian babies born between 1967 and 1983, the preemies received disability pensions at more than six times the rate of the 37 week babies. Karen Springen spoke with Dr. Cathy Spong, chief of the pregnancy aand perinatology branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What can we do to prevent preterm births?
Cathy Spong: Part of the issue is despite everything that we have done and know, preterm births are increasing. It keeps going up a little bit. What's pushing that rise? What can we do to prevent that? Some of it is due to artificial reproduction technology. Babies who are born after assisted reproductive technology (ART) are at increased risk of being born preterm even if they're singletons, but especially if they're multiples.
Do we know why?
We don't know why. Is it due to whatever caused them to be infertile to require ART or is it to the ART itself? That's just one segment of it. Another segment is there's an increase in late preterm births, births between 34 and 37 weeks. That's where the majority of the increase is occurring. Is that due to more medical problems or more at-risk moms? Is it because moms are older? Is it because some might be trying to deliver a little bit earlier because they want to avoid risk? We don't know that answer.
Who's having premature babies?
Your highest risk group is women who have had a prior preterm birth. Those are the women we've targeted for intervention. We have shown that if you give them progesterone, starting at about 16 weeks, you'll reduce their rate of having a subsequent preterm birth by about a third.
But progesterone isn't a cure-all. Last year a study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that it did not prevent preterm birth in twin pregnancies, right?
Exactly. It's not beneficial for women with multiples. We are currently studying women with a short cervix [another risk factor for premature birth], randomized to progesterone or no progesterone.
Why would a shortened cervix cause women to deliver early?
The cervix is the mouth of the uterus. Normally it's about 4 centimeters long. Perhaps at 20 weeks of pregnancy or halfway through, some people's cervix is only half a millimeter. Once the cervix shortens and dilates, you then deliver. The cervix will thin.
Does a woman know she has this?
No, she doesn't.
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Discuss