Nathan Walker Smith was born on March 26th, 2010 at a gestational age of 27 weeks, 4 days, considered as extreme prematurity. While Extreme Prematurity (EP) doesn’t have a universally accepted definition it is a commonly used term. It refers to infants born at least before 28 weeks gestation. Only 30 years ago, 28 weeks was considered to be the age of viability but slowly that has moved back to 22 or 23 weeks and the intervening gestations are variably extreme. If one really wants to refer to extremely extreme prematurity then ‘infants of borderline viability’ is the usual term to use.
At birth Nathan weighed 2 lbs and 7 ounces and measured 14 3/8 inches long.
Nathan was born premature because mother developed HELLP Syndrome (https://health.google.com/health/ref/HELLP+syndrome), a 1 in 1000 occurrence in pregnancies. Oddly, mother did not show the signs doctors expect for this diagnosis. The word “anomaly” was used repeatedly during the evaluation and delivery process. We continue to search for answers.
Completely unrelated to his mother’s critical situation, on day 3 of Nathan’s life, the doctors discovered a Grade IV IVH (Intraventricular Hemorrhage) in the right brain, and Grade III IVH in the left brain. This was a total shock to the doctors, and parents, as the factors and signs did not exist.
Nathan will be spending his first 3 – 4 months of life at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Sharp’s Mary Birch Hospital for Woman & Newborns in San Diego, CA.
Nathan and his parents would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers along this amazing journey.
