For all you Pro-choicers out there

[MysteryMeat]

27 weeks. 6 1/2 months.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/condi....ap/index.html

Tiniest preemie now 'just a normal teen'

Doctors caution against false expectations in others, though

Thursday, August 19, 2004 Posted: 9:51 AM EDT (1351 GMT)
BOSTON (AP) -- Madeline Mann once weighed less than a can of soda as the tiniest surviving newborn known to medicine. Next week, she enters high school as something even more extraordinary -- an honor student who plays violin and likes to Rollerblade.

"Her survival wasn't a miracle; her development was," says Dr. Jonathan Muraskas of Loyola University Hospital in Maywood, Illinois. He treated her as a newborn and reported on her progress Thursday with other doctors in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.

At birth, she wasn't even pint-sized. Born 27 weeks into her mother's pregnancy, she weighed just 9.9 ounces, less than any surviving baby in medical history. She was just 10 inches long, smaller than a football and resting easily in a nurse's hand.

Yet several factors favored her survival. She was a girl, and premature girls tend to fare better than boys. Also, earlier preterm babies have survived, including some after only 22 weeks of pregnancy. Today, 90 percent of newborns survive after 27 weeks of pregnancy.

Survival, though, is just the first hurdle. Major handicaps like blindness and mental retardation are common in the survivors. Madeline, now 15, suffers from little worse than asthma. She is very small for her age, though, weighing 61 pounds and measuring 4-feet-7.

Her parents conceived her by artificial insemination. Her 36-year-old mother developed pre-eclampsia, a potentially dangerous condition that raised her blood pressure and squeezed the blood flow to the developing fetus. Doctors decided to perform a Caesarean section 13 weeks before her due date.

"I remember hearing the softest sound, almost like a kitten," says Robyn Leslie, her mother. "Then I realized it was Madeline crying."

She needed a breathing tube and oxygen in her early days. "Mechanically, you worry about if you're going to be able to get a tube into her little windpipe and trachea. Actually I had no problem," says Muraskas.

Over later years, she developed normally in nearly every way and never returned to a hospital bed except for pneumonia at age 4, delaying kindergarten by one year.

However, her doctors cautioned parents and others from viewing her as proof that a very premature baby will surely prosper with good medical care. Often, such children don't.

"These extremely low birth-weight, 'miracle' newborns can propagate false expectations," warned her doctors in their correspondence to the medical journal.

Now living outside Chicago, Madeline returned to Loyola Hospital last week for a belated 15th birthday party and a reunion with doctors and nurses. A blonde slip of a girl, she beamed a smile full of teeth and braces.

Her curriculum vitae otherwise reads much like any other teenager's. She likes to listen to music, chat with friends on the Internet, go camping and ride horses.

Last summer, she joined in a volunteer project giving out blankets to children with cancer. She has worked for a food pantry, visited with residents at a nursing home, and traveled to Michigan to rehabilitate houses.

"Madeline has overcome a lot of barriers," says her mother. "She has written her own story."

Her fairy-tale ending? She'd like to be a psychologist.

She'll probably have to learn about emotional and mental aberrations from a textbook, though. Her doctors and family says she's just a normal teen.



var clickExpire = "09/18/2004";

How does this apply to people having the right what to do whatever they please with tissue that grows inside their body?

[Satchel]

The tissue is a person?

wow, that is an amazing article. :-D makes me very happy to read!

Just goes to show that those women who have abortions past the 1st trimester suck royal ass. (hell even in the first trimester.. but thats my own personal opinion on that one..... i dont expect anyone to agree w/ me)

[steve-o]

Originally Posted by Satchel

The tissue is a person?

dayuuuuum...

Mr. Kleenex gets around.

Originally Posted by Satchel

The tissue is a person?

Only after a certain point. Like age 30.

[Satchel]

Originally Posted by steve-o

dayuuuuum...

Mr. Kleenex gets around.

Ouch, I appear to have just indicted myself with mass murder

[Burger Slut]

Is this supposed to support the Pro-lifers? Abortion is already illegal after 15 weeks...so this article really doesn't help.

I think everyone should have children. ESPECIALLY people who can't afford it. In fact I think people who can't afford kids should have at least five of them.

After all, human life is so precious.

[kit'n]

Originally Posted by -m-

How does this apply to people having the right what to do whatever they please with tissue that grows inside their body?

what he said x10.

[Joseph V]

Originally Posted by -m-

I think everyone should have children. ESPECIALLY people who can't afford it. In fact I think people who can't afford kids should have at least five of them.

After all, human life is so precious.

yes, i am with you miles.


poor people of the world unite! and have kids!!!

[Joseph V]

oh yea, and thomas, that was almost 7 months into the pregnancy, you are dumb.

[Big Andy]

Originally Posted by -m-

I think everyone should have children. ESPECIALLY people who can't afford it. In fact I think people who can't afford kids should have at least five of them.

After all, human life is so precious.

That's the main reason I turn a blind eye to the whole abortion issue even though I don't really support the procedure, I support the right to choose. I would die inside if my own child were aborted, and it pains me that others' children are aborted, but I feel an aborted child rests in peace with his creator.

Some children are forced to suffer a horrendous earthly existence because some stupid crackheads can't be responsible enough to raise children right.

Like the intensely psychologically ill woman with an extremely abusive husband I know who is considering having a 5th child. And i wouldn't be surprised if a 6th followed. How many lives must one person ruin before realizing they are an unfit parent?

[/end aimless rant]

[Satchel]

I am with you in your aimless rant. It's a very complicated issue to be sure.

Originally Posted by -m-

I think everyone should have children. ESPECIALLY people who can't afford it. In fact I think people who can't afford kids should have at least five of them.

After all, human life is so precious.

You're saying that because you believe a child may have a poor quality of life we should prevent them from having the opportunity to find out by killing it prior to be born?

This is about the worst argument possible to support choice.