On Sunday, the following story appeared in the Daily Mail: The baby who cheated death by 30 minutes: Doctors spot umbilical cord strangling foetus during routine scan and carry out emergency caesarian at 32 weeks, and two things jumped out at me.
Reporter Lucy Laing refers to the 32-week scan mother Melissa Tooke was given during her pregnancy as "a routine scan", but in fact there was nothing routine about it; Melissa had been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and was having extra scans as a result.
The charity Pyramid of Antenatal Change (POAC) has been campaigning for some time now for pregnant women to be advised about the risks of nuchal complications and offered late term scans as standard maternity care.
Ironically, this little baby was very lucky that her mother was ill during pregnancy; had her mother been healthy, then it is highly likely that the outcome would have been very, very different.
Date of birth
Completely separate to the issue of maternity care, the second thing that struck me is that this little girl, Imogen, is a summer born baby, born prematurely and weighing just 2lb 8oz.
As some readers already know, I am now also campaigning on another website, summerbornchildren.org, for summer born children to be able to start school - in Reception Class - at compulsory school age (age 5) if this is what their parents choose.
The charity BLISS is also campaigning for this to happen for children born prematurely, and we can only hope that by the time Imogen reaches school age, her parents will be granted this legitimate choice by their school and/or local authority.
1 comment:
I never thought of that. How awful if your child was born prematurely and then has to start school earlier because of it. As if she/he didn't have enough catching up to do already.
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