`Micropreemie' baby who weighed just over 1 pound at birth goes home from Illinois hospital
`Micropreemie' baby who weighed just over 1 pound at birth goes home from Illinois hospital
A baby girl who weighed just over one pound when she was born prematurely has beaten the odds and gone home with her parents after six months at a Chicago area hospital
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Good to luck to that poor kid being likely to have a lifetime of health issues.
It may be an unpopular opinion, but saving extremely low birth weight babies is only uplifting for the parents. It's a terrible sentence for the baby. Just look up health issues associated with low birth weight. They can pop up at any time in the person's life, from infanthood to late adulthood.
/opinion of a sickly person who was born low weight
My wife had an otherwise completely heathy and normal pregnancy that ended in an “unexplainable” premature birth at 25 weeks 4 days gestation, resulting in a baby born at 930 grams who stayed in the NICU for 100 days and now at 22 months she is reaching or exceeding the health benchmarks for full-term babies her age. The power of modern medicine grows every year. It has come a very long way even in the past 10. The doctors told us there was absolutely nothing we could’ve done differently and I certainly hope my child doesn’t come to me in 20 years and tell me that they’d rather we just gave up.
/opinion of an extremely relieved and proud parent of a child who is clearly very happy to exist.
I'm very happy for you and your family. That said, your child is clearly still a child and you won't know for decades whether or not the low birth weight had an impact on its health.
Just like I wouldn’t know for decades the fact that I grew up with autism that was undiagnosed until 32 years old, was sexually assaulted at 10, and at the direction of the cult my parents raised me in was beaten regularly resulting in CPTSD, all of which I’m still unwrapping in therapy every week. I still push through the pain and the anguish because life is beautiful and it’s my choice every day to continue.
The one thing I thank my parents for above all else is for having me and giving me the choice to push through that pain every single day. Not comparing situations at all but I’ll be there for my kid every single day of their journey and - if they should look me in the eye and tell me it’s all too painful then I will help them find a way to make it easier or make it stop. To insinuate I should have just given up at some point is just defeatist, pessimistic, and wrong. No child had a choice in coming into this world. We all have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt and the choice to put them down should lie with ourselves as the individual alone and no one else.
Would you prefer to have not survived? Not trying to be snarky; honest question, as I feel conflicted.
Would you prefer it if someone else had lived a healthier life in your place?
It's tough to say. I never wish that somebody else would not survive, and I appreciate the utter heartache that parents and other family would feel at the loss of the child. However, I do expect that such children will suffer more than the average person as a direct result of being kept alive when born at such a low weight and believe that making that decision for them is cruel.
I suppose that means that, at least in these extreme cases where the baby weighs less than three or four pounds, yes, it would be kinder to let the infant die rather than to condemn it to a life of health issues.
Edit: I realize I didn't answer your question directly. Yes, I would have been better off if I had not survived. I'm neutral as to whether or not a future baby would have replaced me.
Most interesting. Thanks for sharing your perspective!