Eyesight question.

[Ahren]

My dd was born 5 weeks ago at 33w6. My question is when do premmies start looking at things and following faces ect? My health visitor asked if she was doing it yet and when i said no she wasn't sure if that was normal and told me to ask at my 6 week check. Any ideas?

 

[dizz]

Health visitors tend to roll out their standard list of questions for X age babies without engaging their brain where preemies are concerned. Add in the nice concerned faces if you don't give their standard answer and you've got a wonderful recipe for alarm! I had it with not smiling at the 6 week check with a 33 weeker - they were muttering dire things about possible autism and all sorts - but she shouldn't have flipping been born yet so cut the poor girl a break!

If you're asking at your 6 week check I'd ask the expected age... but adjust your baby's age to reflect for prematurity in comparing the two.

For what it's worth - my 33 week girlie now at 7 months can spot a bottle of milk from about 10 miles away, locate it and if you're not handing it over fast enough - grab it and ram it straight in the vague direction of her mouth within about 2 seconds (sometimes we miss and get the left nostril instead of her gob though) - I can't quite remember when the face fascination kicked in though but I remember light sources being of interest relatively early (and still are now).

 

[Foogirl]

Ugh, bloody health visitors. Next time she comes away with crap like that, as her how many unborn babies can see. It bothers me they don't even try to understand. Your LO should have her 6 week check in 8 weeks time. At the point when she should have been 6 weeks old, if everything had gone to plan. Also make sure when they are charting weight, they do the same, the charts do allow for adjusted ages so they should be charting her now for 2 weeks before the newborn bit.

The only thing you do with a preemie LO by actual age instead of adjusted age is weaning. Bliss have a great book for health visitors. Tell her to apply to bliss it have one sent.

 

[dizz]

Ugh, bloody health visitors. Next time she comes away with crap like that, as her how many unborn babies can see. It bothers me they don't even try to understand. Your LO should have her 6 week check in 8 weeks time. At the point when she should have been 6 weeks old, if everything had gone to plan. Also make sure when they are charting weight, they do the same, the charts do allow for adjusted ages so they should be charting her now for 2 weeks before the newborn bit.

The only thing you do with a preemie LO by actual age instead of adjusted age is weaning. Bliss have a great book for health visitors. Tell her to apply to bliss it have one sent.

Oh and be prepared to have to explain how they do the adjusted age lines for weight for EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. you see at baby clinic... my designated HV has obviously got pissed off with it now as I noticed our clinic card has suddenly developed in HUUUUUGE capital letters a comment about "PLEASE ADJUST AGE BACK 7 WEEKS TO ALLOW FOR PREMATURITY" which made me giggle since I've been saying it for flipping months myself!

Jabs go on actual age as well as weaning (and don't mention weaning preemies on the main part of the forums or you'll get the multitude of "we know betters" lecturing you about how "you need to do everything for premature babies by adjusted age" and ignoring what the actual advice IS for preemies - and it's particularly head banging on desk frustrating!)

 

[Foogirl]

jabs. of course. Forgot those!

 

[Ahren]

Thankyou for your help! We've been a bit up in the air with everything because when she was born i wasn't booked in at hospital (had been there since 4am she was born at 10pm) and the whole time she was in hospital no one could tell us anything about her and how she was doing, we were always told to ask the next day. Even now she has been home 3 weeks and all the midwives and health visitors don't seem to realise she was born early and are treating everything the same as first LO. My 6 week check is next week when she will be 6 weeks.