Preterm Births

My youngest girl has lost her first 2 teeth, can swim 3 laps at the public pool, and is very excited to start the first grade. As I’ve discussed elsewhere on this site, she was born at 26-weeks gestational age, weighing about 1.25 lbs.

The D-News and the Trib had articles on an apparently steep increase in the percentage of premature births. Looking at some of the background data (which, given the times and places of the research, might include my girl), it appears that researchers don’t have an explanation for the increase. This troubling trend has significant human and financial implications.

Last month, Sara and I went on a tour of the beefed-up Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Dixie Regional Medical Center. A lot has changed nationally in NICUs in just a few years. NICUs are brighter and louder (doctors previously believed that much lighting at all could cause retinopathy and that much sound at all unduly stressed the infants), infections are down (by the simple, ubiquitous installation of dispensers for alcohol-based hand cleansers), and brain trauma is greatly reduced (apparently by closer monitoring and treatment of blood pressure in the first few days).