Stories of Premies

Hi, it’s Kai Payton again. In my first blog, I introduced my You & The World project which I’m doing on premature births. I gave basic information about premature births, such as about 380,000 babies are born prematurely a year in the U.S. A premature baby is a baby that was born 36 or fewer weeks from their initial due date and can cause many problems. Some of those problems were stated in my previous blog post so if you haven’t read it check it out. I also talked about why I chose to do premature births and it was because my aunt had a premature baby and it was a hard experience for her.

In this blog, I wanted to know more about the experience and how other families felt so I researched some stories from other mothers that had premature babies. The first story I found was from Catharine Aboulhouda’s family. Catharine was born weighing 1 pound and 11 ounces with a bleeding brain, a heart defect, and a heart murmur. She was due in October but was born in July. Catharine came home from the hospital after 113 days of being hospitalized there but she still needed monitors and oxygen. Now she’s a healthy little girl that is traveling around the country to share her story to help others understand how serious premature births are.

Another story I read about was from Tyler Jameson’s family. Tyler’s mom said she “developed preeclampsia with her first baby and was hospitalized on complete bedrest.” Tyler was born by emergency c-section at 26 weeks due to placental abruption. Placenta abruption is when the placenta detaches from the womb and it’s rare for it to happen. He was born with “respiratory distress syndrome, apnea, anemia, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, intraventricular hemorrhage, patent ductus, arteriosus, jaundice, and infections.” Some of the infections he was diagnosed with were sepsis, pneumonia, and bacterial meningitis. Due to his prematurity he had to get 2 surgeries when he was 6 months. Tyler has grown since then and shows no signs of disabilities that are common in premature babies.

I also did an interview with my aunt recently (The one who had Jase). She went deeper into her story about the experience of having Jase and the difficult times she had going through it. It was helped me think back to when Jase was going through his struggles. She explained that the experience when she first had Jase knowing that he was premature was like an “out-of-body experience,” and she didn’t realise how severe the experience was until later on. She also said that one of the things that got her through the experience was gospel music and praying. This adds to my understanding of Premature Births because I got  personal opinions from a mother that had a premature baby. It still amazes me how premature births can happen to any mother and if they want to do something about it it’s very expensive.

-Picture of The Interview With My Aunt and The Interview Questions

Overall with this blog post I wanted to get real stories from other families that experienced what my aunt experienced because some cases are more severe than others. I also wanted to share some of my personal connection to the topic to show why I care about it.