Angie also created a blog that shares her full story.  She created it in hopes that other moms out there could gain some hope on their preemies.  She stated that, “When I was on bed rest I searched the internet constantly looking for stories that would give me the strength to keep laying down and positivity that he would be ok”.

You can check out her blog at:  http://mylifeasamom-angie.blogspot.com/

Thank you Angie!

~Audrey Lee

Madden’s Story – 25 Weeks

Weight 2.2 lbs

Height 13”

I found out at 23 weeks pregnant that I had an incompetent cervix and was put on strict bed rest.  I was able to keep my sweet little boy in for 2 more weeks but ended up in labor and delivery and delivered a beautiful baby boy named Madden.  They instantly took him and put him on the vent.  However, they said his coloring was great and they had never seen a 25 weeker look so pink.

Madden On The Day He Was Born - Photo Courtesy Of Angie Martinez

Madden was in the hospital from February 13^th to May 1^st.  He was on the vent for about 2 weeks, the came off of that and went on C-Pap.  After about 3 weeks on C-Pap they put him on a nasal cannula.  The only problems that he was having were apnea spells and bradycardias.  He would have them several times a day so they would increase the flow of his cannula or the amount of oxygen.  Of course we were worried because to us the thought of him not breathing or his heart rate slowing down was very scary.  However, after several weeks on the cannula we could see signs that he was getting better.  They removed the cannula and he was breathing room air!

He continued to have bradys and apnea here and there.  The rule was he had to go 5 days with no spells before he could go home.  We were 10 minutes away from taking him off his monitors and he had a brady and apnea spell.  Therefore they doctors said he needed to go home on an apnea monitor.  We got one and he came home 2 days later and is a sweet healthy baby boy!  No one can believe now that he was so tiny!

Another milestone for Madden was his brain scans.  For the first 5 days no one could touch him except when necessary by the nurses.  On the 6^th day he had a brain scan, it came back clear!  No signs of a brain bleed!  What a huge thing for him!  All the doctors and nurses went on and on about how good this was for him!  On day 14 he had another one and again it came back clear!  The next one was scheduled for day 40 of his life and amazingly it came back clear as well!  Amazingly my sweet 25 week baby was doing great.  Minus a few apnea spells and getting a minor urinary tract infection he had no issues!

He just turned 1 on February 13, 2012.  He is right on target for his corrected age and weighs about 24 lbs!  He’s a very healthy sweet baby boy!

Madden On His First Birthday - Photo Courtesy Of Angie Martinez

Photo courtesy of Audrey Lee

This morning while sitting at my desk (it’s a slow Friday ) I was thinking about the first time I saw my eldest daughter…the first time I touched her.  I had a C-section, but due to hemorrhaging I don’t actually remember seeing her in the operating room before they rushed her to the NICU.  We have a personal video of me brushing past the tubes to kiss her little head before they took her away but I have no recollection of this.

I remember that night after surgery, after waking up from anesthesia (I eventually ended up being put under general during the operation after she was born), calling everyone and telling them that I had just had the most beautiful baby in the world.  My friends asked me what she looked like and I said, “I have no idea…but she’s beautiful!”  Ha-ha!  My husband had brought up a picture for me but my eyes were so blurry from the medication that I couldn’t focus on it.

I hadn’t been able to sleep at all even though everyone tried their best to get me to relax.  I needed to see my baby, I needed to touch her.  All I knew was I went into surgery with my baby and I was in recovery without her.  I knew she was premature and in the NICU but I wasn’t processing everything too well emotionally.  My husband tells me I kept whispering under my breath that they took my baby and that he needed to help me go get her (me talking on morphine ).  I think it was probably from the weeks of the doctors saying that they didn’t know when they were going to have to, “Take the baby by emergency C-section.”

The next day I struggled to get the strength and feeling back in my legs so that I could get to the NICU to see her.  I’ll never forget my husband saying ever so sweetly to me, “Honey, are you ready to see your baby?”

You know, I had always dreamed of delivering my baby and seeing  my little wrinkly newborn laying across my chest and combing over every little feature…looking deeply into her eyes.

Well he wheeled me past one large room full of babies and into another just the same where alarms were going off everywhere.  There were beeps and bells, and the buzz of respirators…the sounds of the NICU…they stay with you forever.  Eventually the noise becomes normal, and part of the ebb and flow of the preemie daily life, but not that soon…not yet.

I didn’t know which bed he’d stop at…which bed belonged to our baby?!  There were dozens and dozens of babies and I had no clue which was mine.  It’s a strange feeling you know?

It sort of reminds me of when I was a child and my parents took me to visit Cabbage Patch Land in Georgia.  This is a place where Cabbage Patch Kids are “born” and there are tons of them under this tree…and you don’t know whether they are boys or girls or if they are big or little…there are even preemies.  I remember there were so many Cabbage Patch babies there and you wouldn’t know which was the lucky one that would be picked to be yours.  Well, finding out which preemie was mine sort of felt just as strange.  (The place is still in business:      http://www.cabbagepatchkids.com/visit/).

He pushed me over to the corner bed in room 203, the room where the sicker and smaller of the babies were…and helped me stand.  He pulled back the blanket from on top of her bed and said, “There she is, there’s your baby girl.”

It’s funny, he could have told me any of those babies were mine and I would have believed him…funny how this experience changes everything.   I looked down at her ever so tiny body, and I wanted to just caress it.  I went to rub her leg and he stopped me, he said that he was told by the doctors just to touch her with even pressure.  There was so much I had to learn…

In that moment, I touched her little hand and she grabbed my finger.  He said, “That’s our baby!”

And I…I told her, “I love you!”

I was so exhausted that I had to sit, and frankly, I felt I could faint.  She kept grabbing my finger ever so tightly and I rested my head against the plastic of her isolette.  Somewhere between, “I love you” and a few tears, I feel asleep with my head against the plastic.  We both had a little nap touching each other for the first time.  I think I was finally able to breathe a bit once I saw her.  We did have that moment I guess…it was just a bit different.  It would still be a while till I could hold her and forever it seemed till I could look her in the eyes really…and check out every feature of her little body.  But I’ll never forget that precious moment together.

I always keep a photo at my desk of the first time I touched my daughter.  I have the same picture framed in my house as well, and I make sure to look at it daily.  It marks the start of our NICU journey before she became really sick with complications and lost so much weight.  It marks the brief moment before the roller coaster truly began. Looking at this photo makes the triumph even more rich.  It brings back one of my strongest memories of motherhood and the immediate love I felt the moment I saw her tiny face.  My husband had captured a picture of her hand holding my finger.  When I look at it, it’s a testament of the impossible coming to pass since we found out at 21 weeks that we’d probably never make it to that moment.

So today, just think about that precious moment where you held or touched your little one for the first time.  It was magical, wasn’t it?!

~Audrey Lee

Jaya’s parents are pleased to report that today she is a thriving eight pound three month old!

Kamneel Maharaj is quoted as saying, “Whenever we were worried, she would kick from inside and say, ‘I’m here; I’m alive!’ ‘We thought maybe she was trying to tell us that everything was OK, so we were always hopeful.”

Read more:

http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/16/15-minute-old-newborn-gets-pacemaker-for-the-heart/#ixzz1me89QjKz

http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120216-0000092/15-minute-old-newborn-gets-pacemaker-for-heart

Babyfightgear.com

Babyfightgear.com has created a “Little Fighter” onesie and will be donating 100% of the proceeds to Preemies Today. Please check them out and help spread the word.

1. Go to our Facebookpage and like the post on “Little Fighter”

2. You can purchase one through babyfightgear.com

3. Share this information on your blog, Facebook page, or any other groups you have joined!

100% of the profits go to Preemies Today!! Please help spread the news and promote prematurity awareness!

http://babyfightgear.com/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=preemies+today&x=0&y=0

freeclipartpictures.com

Everyone knows the importance of vitamin D for growing strong and healthy bones.  We know that it is important to get plenty of vitamin D during our pregnancies to reduce many risks such as rickets, a condition linked to musculoskeletal and health complications.  In 2010, studies showed that women who take high doses of vitamin D pregnancy actually had greatly reduced risk of complications like gestational diabetes, preterm birth, and infection.  It has also been found that vitamin D can help reduce the risk of an infant contracting RSV.  Infants with deficient vitamin D levels are six times more likely to get the respiratory syncytial virus during their first year of life when compared to infants with high levels of vitamin D.  Then scientists found that there may even be a link to low vitamin D levels and the development of pre-eclampsia.  Then this week another link was shown by Australian researchers that gives evidence that pregnant women with low vitamin D levels may produce children at risk for language difficulties (The report was published in the Feb. 13 online edition of Pediatrics).

Over the past twenty years, vitamin D levels in pregnant women have steadily decreased and it is believed that women are becoming deficient in this particular vitamin because they have slowly been exposed to less sunlight.  People with dark skin pigmentation can need upwards of 20 – 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D.  Another problem is the food we eat is so over-processed that there is lack of vitamin D as well.

Doctors are now urging women to get their vitamin D levels checked and especially do it before getting pregnant.  If there is a problem, doctors can work on fixing it before pregnancy.  And during pregnancy, women should increase their vitamin D intake.

As a pseudo-hormone, vitamin D affects almost every system and organ in the body.  Now, I feel that I can’t talk about vitamin D without stressing the importance of sunlight.  No matter how many supplements you take, nothing will ever be able to replace the benefits and levels of vitamin D that can be processed in the body from sunlight.  Vitamin D is a vitamin that our bodies can actually manufacture through a complex relationship with sunlight and the cells in our lower skin (convert light energy into vitamin D).  Vitamin D absorbs dietary calcium and phosphorus from the intestines and suppresses the release of parathyroid hormone which causes bone resorption.

If we don’t make enough of  1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 which is the active metabolite of vitamin D, in the blood, the body cannot absorb and/or use the dietary calcium. When dietary calcium and the mineral phosphorus are not properly absorbed through the intestine, the body also cannot build strong bones and it puts both the mother and child at risk for many other complications.  How do you make 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 so that you can actually absorb the supplements you take and vitamins from your food?  Get some sunlight!  “In the winter, it’s impossible to produce vitamin D from the sun if you live north of Atlanta because the sun never gets high enough in the sky for its ultraviolet B rays to penetrate the atmosphere, yet in summer, experts say a fair skinned person going outside for 10 minutes in the midday sun (in shorts and a tank top with no sunscreen) will give the body enough radiation to produce about 10,000 international units of the vitamin.”

~Audrey Lee

http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20100504/high-doses-of-vitamin-d-may-cut-pregnancy-risk

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/09/vitamin-d-in-pregnancy-may-protect-infants-from-virus/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/18/us-vitamin-d-idUSTRE67H3CJ20100818

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070227105140.htm

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/02/13/moms-vitamin-d-levels-linked-to-language-problems-in-kids

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/heart/articles/2008/06/23/time-in-the-sun-how-much-is-needed-for-vitamin-d?page=2

Check it out!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500368_162-57374375/c-sections-not-always-best-for-small-babies/

http://www.clker.com/clipart-2499.html

Date: First Friday of Every Month

Time:  7 pm and lasts 75 minutes

Details:  All equipment is provided but you can bring your own mat if you would like.

SIDS Mid Atlantic is sponsoring a free yoga class once a month to mothers who have lost a child.  The class is a beginner yoga class and focuses on relaxing poses to encourage healing and restoration.  According to the ad on twotinyhands.com, to register you must contact Marsha McClellan who is the director at The Yoga Connection which is located in Manassas, Virginia.  You can also email twotinyhands@gmail.com for more information.

When babies are born very premature or are quite ill, they are exposed to painful procedures quite frequently and it can be difficult to know whether their pain is being managed properly.  Is a baby crying just because babies cry sometimes or are they crying because they are truly in pain?  And if they are in pain, how much pain are they in?

It is possible that undergoing frequent painful medical procedures like these can cause long-term harm on a baby’s nervous system.  When a child is over exposed to pain during infancy, he or she can develop feeding and sleeping problems as well as chronic pain problems, learning and behavioral disorders.  Children can become over sensitized to touch to where even the slightest things can feel painful.

Currently, infant pain (for preemies) is assessed using the premature infant pain profile (PIPP) that is based on behavioral and physiological body reactions like crying and facial expressions.  While this system has its high points, it also has some problems.  A flaw with this system is that it is, “largely dependent on unconscious reflexes and may not be reliably linked to central sensory processing in the brain.” (1)

Hospitals in the London region and the University of Oxford did a study where they measured the brain activity in infants to try and better understand their pain response.  The new assessment was published in a unique video-based publication (Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)).

This pain assessment technique evaluates the electrical activity in skeletal muscles and uses an EEG to detect activity in the areas of the brain where “unpleasant sensations” are processed (1).  The study data was collected during times when the infants were undergoing medically necessary heel sticks (for routine blood collection).

The author of the study, Dr. Rebeccah Slater, says, “We want to help work out how effective pain treatments are and understand the effects of prematurity on pain, and whether prematurity has long-term implications on the pain response.”(2)  JoVe is the very first and the only peer-reviewed video journal that is indexed in PubMed and MEDLINE.  The video shows the technique used to measure pain in the infant.

I think what is really important is the larger implications here for pain management for preemies and infants.  By being able to note pain in infants and whether or not it is being controlled, doctors will be able to intervene if necessary with pain medicine.  This can go both ways.  If a child is not experiencing too much pain, high doses of pain medications can be weaned if possible as well as unnecessary suffering can be avoided.

Because of publishing in a video journal, clinicians and researchers are able to easily see the new pain assessment technique and apply it.  Dr. Slater states, “It’s quite hard to measure brain activity in premature infants…the methods are quite complicated and we wanted people to be able to do this technique.” (2)

Watch the video!

http://www.jove.com/video/3118/electrophysiological-measurements-and-analysis-of-nociception-in-human-infants’

(1) The Journal of Visualized Experiments (2011, December 21). New method of infant pain assessment. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January

(2) L. Fabrizi, A. Worley, D. Patten, S. Holdridge, L. Cornelissen, J. Meek, S. Boyd, R. Slater. Electrophysiological Measurements and Analysis of Nociception in Human Infants. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2011; (58) DOI: 10.3791/3118

Note:  Prochieve is already FDA approved for the treatment of secondary amenorrhea and marketed for infertility but the FDA accepted a new drug application for its evaluation in the use of preventing premature birth. This drug still may be approved for premature birth prevention from the FDA.  We’ll have to wait and see what the next step will be.

~Audrey Lee

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-columbia-watson-gel-idUSTRE80H1JC20120118

http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_m3_2/preterm-birth-columbia.html#hdng0

Photo courtesy of Audrey Lee

A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology of more than 37,000 children in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), suggests that the children delivered via cesarean (planned or emergency) section rather than vaginal delivery have an increased risk of developing asthma by the age of three.  What is even more interesting is that this trend was seen in children that weren’t hereditarily susceptible to asthma and allergies. The study looked at the relationship between delivery method compared to the development of lower respiratory tract infections, wheezing, and asthma during the first three years of life within the study group children.  The study results indicate that children born by cesareans have a slightly higher risk for asthma at three years (no increased risk of frequent lower respiratory tract infections or wheezing). Also, the increased risk of asthma in children delivered by caesarean was higher in children of mothers without allergies.  Maria Magnus, a researcher at the Department of Chronic Diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and the primary author of this study states that, “It is unlikely that a cesarean delivery itself would cause an increased risk of asthma, rather that children delivered this way may have an underlying vulnerability.”  When a child is delivered through cesarean section they are often at an increased risk of serious respiratory problems within the first weeks of life which could play a role in asthma developing later on.  Another theory is that, “children delivered by cesarean may have an increased risk of asthma due to an altered bacterial flora in the intestine that affects their immune system development”.  What is so great about this study is the size of the population studied.

Since preemies are at high risk for lung problems, and because many preemies are born via cesarean, it is important to keep an eye out for the development of asthma.  It is also a good idea to possibly look into VBACs if medically safe and viable.

This isn’t the first time this argument of delivery method being tied to asthma has been brought up though.  In fact, there have been quite a few smaller studies done linking delivery to future medical problems like asthma and allergies.  In 2008 a study, presented at the American Thoracic Society’s 2008 Conference showed some fascinating data (http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20080521/c-section-tied-to-childhood-asthma).   It was suggested that cesarean sections rather than vaginal deliveries may raise the risk of childhood asthma and allergies by interfering with the child’s immune system development.  The study presented at that conference showed that babies born via cesarean have impaired immune cell function because of suppression of regulatory T cells, which regulate the development and function of the immune system.  It is thought that the stress and labor process as well as exposure to microbes through the vaginal birth canal may influence the immune response in the child.  Obviously the data was preliminary and more research is needed but it gave a possible mechanism to what much research has already shown.  Ngoc Ly, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco stated that, “This finding is exciting because it suggests that the mode of delivery may be an important factor influencing immune system development.”

M. C. Magnus, S. E. Haberg, H. Stigum, P. Nafstad, S. J. London, S. Vangen, W. Nystad. Delivery by Cesarean Section and Early Childhood Respiratory Symptoms and Disorders: The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2011; 174 (11): 1275 DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwr242

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110114440.htm

http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20080521/c-section-tied-to-childhood-asthma