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Home › Articles › Preemies › Developmental Difficulties

Developmental Difficulties

When Premature Infants Fall Behind

By Gwen Morrison

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

Jennifer Pinto-Martin is a nursing professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has been involved in the Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage Study, the largest regional study of premature babies. These babies have been studied for 14 years. "While many babies born prematurely do very well in terms of growth and development, many have physical and psychological problems that emerge as the child grows up," says Pinto-Martin. "We have found that poor school performance and the need for special education is not always recognized when the child first enters school, but may be more apparent by third or fourth grade."

Gaining Ground
Kim Wilson from Hamilton, N.J., co-author of Living Miracles: Stories of Hope From Parents of Premature Babies (St. Martin's Press, 2000), offers this advice to parents: "As your preemie grows older, be aware of their speech and pronunciation and their progress or lack of. When my son was 6 years old, he tested on a 3-year-old level."

Wilson's son was born two months premature but weighed an astonishing 5 pounds, 7 ounces. At 8 years old he had caught up with peers and is still currently on target. He attended speech therapy a few times a week and was tested from one to three times per year.

Dorothy Phelan from Ontario, Canada, remembers the worry that came with her tiny bundle of joy in May 1973. "She had such a tiny stomach, she was up every hour," says Phelan. "She walked late and then had a terrible time with her teeth. The doctors told me her jaws weren't completely developed when she was born. She later needed extensive work done on her teeth,including plates and braces. We discovered when she was 4 years old that her vision was underdeveloped at birth. She ended up wearing bifocals to correct the vision problem."


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