Only read what you are dealing with... ya right!

So when we got transferred to the Children Hospital's NICU in order for our to son to get NEC surgery done, they gave us a book and said only read the issues that you need to don't read the whole book. You will get overwhelmed. Well needless to say with everything he had to deal with we read almost the entire book. Plus I am an information research freak and read every book and informational website I could get my hands on. So this knowledge I have gained I feel is information that I can and need pass along to you. I already did the work so why not.

For this first part I want to talk about Medical Complications that your preemie might have to deal with. These are going to be the ones my son dealt with because I can tell you my personal experiences. I am going to site some of the best information that I found from some books and other places and that will be noted, but I want to share my experience with the non-medical jibber-jabber. The information that I provide in not in any way that to be used as a type of diagnosis. This information in solely my opinion and experience. The information that has been sited can be found in the book or other places that I have listed.

One of my favorite books is, Your Premature Baby, by Frank P. Manginello, M.D. and Theresa Foy DiDeronimo, M.ED. I love it. I am going to site it a lot. I highly recommend buying it or renting it from the library.

They start off their medical complications chapter by saying, "...word of caution: Do not read this chapter from beginning to end. Don't let yourself get caught up in the kind of negative thinking that seeks out all the worst possible scenarios and imposes them on the baby. Don't use the information in this chapter to make this time more difficult then it already its."

First off I want to talk about prematurity-related problems that are the most common.

Anemia - You might here them say your child is anemic. I personally think that his is the most common issue. This happens with full term babies as well. Their body's are adjusting. My son seemed to be anemic for the first 6 to 8 weeks of his new life. his levels would get low that they would have to transfuse him or in jibber-jabber give him packed red blood cells. This made me nervous at first. You hear all of those horror stories of blood. You don't know who the person is who donated it... I finally after the 3rd transfusion decided worrying about it was pointless. He needed and that was that. So that was a battle not log lived in my brain. This was one of the hard times though because when they are anemic they prick their teeny tinny heel constantly to check their blood levels. My son still has scars on his heels from this.