WORLD PREMATURITY DAY

 Together for Babies Born too Soon – World Prematurity Day

Around the world each year, about fifteen million babies are born prematurely also known as pre term births. World Prematurity Day derives a significant flash to focus upon global consideration on the foremost cause of the deaths of babies. World Prematurity Day is obvserved to stand with the mothers of the premature babies to let them know that the society stands with them and their babies are not different from others.

Knowing about the day as World Prematurity Day realized me to write upon it. As I am a mother to a baby boy who is 13 months old and I can clearly say that my baby got delivered by week 37 and day 2, which identify him as a preterm baby weighing 2.76 kgs and he was just about the length of an arm. He was born straight twenty days before the EDD. It is a massive struggle for a mother who carries a baby in her womb for about 8 months and getting into 9^th month while having a fear what may happen next.

At 6^th month of pregnancy I was diagnosed with ICP – Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy. It is a condition that slows the normal flow of bile in the gallbladder. It causes severe itching over all body and has no medication. The itching only goes away after the baby is delivered. Where cholestasis causes itching for a mom to be; it increases the risk for fetal distress, preterm birth, or stillbirth. A developing baby relies on the mother’s liver to remove bile acids from the blood; therefore, the elevated levels of maternal bile cause stress on the baby’s liver too.

No one can understand the feeling of transformation that goes inch by inch in a mother’s body who sufferers from severe itching. This is the time when each moment becomes so special that a mum senses the baby in her womb by the tiny kicks and it’s the only way to measure the presence of the tiny human being.

So this finely states well that it is not an easy task to be a mum anyway round and to be a mum of a pre mature baby is even harder as I remember  rushing to  hospital a number of times at odd hours to get my CTG done just to  check if the little one in my womb is all fine and nothing may  happen to him due to health conditions. It is a number of things a mum goes through with first a child in the womb and then when he is in your hands. Certainly no one understands the pain of a child except your own mum. Great fear lies around until your preterm baby comes out all safe in your hands and this is a beautiful feeling. This is the time when with a baby a new mother is also born.