Did you know that each year approximately 500,000 babies are born too soon? In fact premature birth is the number one killer of American babies.
I know about this first hand because in 2006 I delivered twin boys at just 20 weeks. Although I had great prenatal care, ate well, and exercised my babies were born prematurely without any concrete explanation of why it happened, and the doctors could do nothing to save them.
My boys, Rico and Jordan were perfect to me. They had 10 fingers 10 little toes, but they were so tiny and their little lungs weren’t developed enough. They couldn’t be saved for a number of reasons, however I was told that one of the main things was that there wasn’t even equipment and tubing tiny enough to help their lungs. My twins weighed only 9 ounces and were only 11 inches long. I was told had they been born just 4 weeks later they would have had a better chance.
Babies being born prematurely is a big problem in the United States, in fact over the last 20 years the number of premature births has increase more than 30%. The March of Dimes is trying to do everything they can to help improve things and give babies a chance at a healthy start.
In 2003 the March of Dimes launched a prematurity campaign to help address this crisis and help families deliver their babies at full term (39 weeks). They are funding life saving research as well as reaching out to legislators asking for help to improve health care options for moms and their newborns. Sometimes had mothers who were uninsured at time of pregnancy had a physcial check-up or other healthcare prior to becoming pregnant certain issues could have been detected and treated preventing the premature birth of their child.
Having a premature baby is very emotionally and financially taxing and families can use all the support they can get, I am personally asking you to donate to the help families who have babies in the NICU.
November 17th has been marked as “WORLD PREMATURITY DAY” please spread the word.