The Fi and Vi Log: National Prematurity Awareness Day

Today was National Prematurity Awareness Day. Even though Fi has been very healthy since birth, I still often wonder how different things would have been had she been born full term. Would she be taller? Would she weigh more? Would I worry less about her weight? Would I behave differently, especially the first year of her life? Would her first cold have necessitated a nebulizer? Would her personality have been different? For example, I never really let others hold her during her first year, and even though we didn’t stay locked in our home, we didn’t socialize that much either. We were relatively isolated, and I wonder if she would be a more social child if she hadn’t been born early. Not that I am complaining. I love her little personality. It fits in with our family very well.

I am forever thankful that I have her. I really believe that had she not been born when she was, I would not be a mother right now. I’ve heard too many stories that did not have happy endings that share many themes with the day Fi was born. However, I do not want to dismiss or ignore the fear and utter hopelessness I felt on the day she was born and in the weeks that followed. Our journey has been a relatively easy one. Fi only spent seven weeks in the NICU. I thought that was a long time, until I met women whose children spent months and months in the NICU, who came home on monitors, who had all sorts of health issues and near death experiences while in the NICU, who continue to have developmental and health issues because of prematurity. Somehow, we escaped all that. And I was able to nurse Fi until I decided to stop.

So today, and every day for that matter, I am thankful for the research into surfactant that kept my daughter’s lungs from collapsing, and for the doctors and nurses who took care of her in ways I couldn’t, and for all the equipment that monitored her and made sure to let someone know when she stopped breathing so they could stimulate her to start again. I am thankful for having two insurance companies at the time she was born (John’s and mine), because between them, they paid out almost $600,000 to the hospital and doctors. I am so thankful for who she is becoming, a typical three and a half year old who has many imaginary friends and a whole barnyard full of imaginary animals, is the little captain of a whale watching ship, who informed me that soon it will be time for her to read her own toothpaste tube, and who still needs cuddling sometimes from her mommy.

However, I still wonder how different Fi, or really how different I would be, if Fi had been born full term.