Preemies

Older preemie question.

  I had my son at 28 weeks two years ago. He has been delayed based on his age, but right on schedule for his adjusted age for milestones exept for speech. He can talk, and has a lot of words he only said once. He doesnt repeat words often, and would rather just point and do signs. He will also just flat out refuse to talk but he goes on long speeches of baby chat once in a while. I also notice he gets frustrated when I make him tell me what he wants to the point he would rather go thirsty then say drink, milk, or thirsty

 He also has been really small. He just now is on the weight chart at 3% and height he is at 15%. We keep getting told that by age two you can't tell the difference and stop doing the adjusted age for preemies. I wondering if anyone who has a older preemie child noticed your child catching up suddenly, or if at two they were still behind a little? 

Re: Older preemie question.

  • Ds was totally caught up on everything at age two EXCEPT speech. In fact, at age two he still hadn't started talking. He was 2 y 1 m old before he ever said mama. Within the next few months, he was adding new words daily and you could tell he also understood much more too (based on his ability to follow direction). We enrolled him in a MMO program at preschool at 18 months thinking it would help...maybe it did, maybe it didn't. When we transitioned him to daycare at 2 y 9 m, he was still behind his peers but caught up quickly at that point. I would say by 3.5 there was no difference between him and most of the boys in his class (all the girls still seem way more verbal). Now he knows entire songs, the pledge, has memorized and can "read" you entire books and basically never stops talking or asking "why?" and "how?". Try not to stress too much...it will come. Oh...and we had him evaluated by the school system at 3 y 1 m and he did not qualify for therapy at that time. At 2 years, even being completely non-verbal, he also didn't qualify for therapy through our state early intervention. Ds will be 4 in January and was born at 33 weeks.
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  • That "caught up by 2" is not entirely accurate. First, that came from a time before the extreme preemies we have these days. Second, even at THAT, it only applies to 85% of preemies (that leaves another 15%!).

    My favorite neo on the NICU said it really seems to be more like a year for every month they are early. My son was born at 26+2 and just on his 3yr checkup, did the doc finally deem him "typical."
    My son had a lot of other complications (mainly around feeding, which causes pretty much everything else) and spoke quite late. As of last September, (just over 2 years adjusted) he had 7 words.

    This September, he's using 7 and 8 word sentences. He did get several months of speech therapy and started a larger daycare with older kids, which I think has helped the most. 

    FWIW, my son is also very small. At his checkup he was 7% for height and 10% for weight, which was a huge gain for him from before. 

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  • The same goes for my DD. Her main delay is in sheech. I fought really hard to get her seeing a speech therapist when she turned 2 and it has really paid off. She literally went from having 0 words to saying 4-5 word sentences in 4 months. Also, like TriciaJoy said, starting preschool has triggered a huge language explosion. About a month ago we were still only getting one word responses and now we have sentences. Good luck!

  • This was the case for my son.  He was born at 32 weeks and will be 14 (gulp) on Sunday :(  He was always small for his age...I want to say until 3rd or 4th grade and he had severe speech delays.  I remember taking him to his 5 year check up and the pediatrician did the standard hearing test.  He passed.  I told her that he couldn't speak clearly and she said at 5 a stranger should understand about 90% of what he said.  I explained that a stranger could probably understand 30% of what he said and I "translated" for him for the most part.  She sent us to see an audiologist.

    The audiologist did a more in-depth hearing test which showed that my son had hearing loss in both ears.  My insurance thankfully covered speech therapy and my son went weekly.  It helped tremendously.  He began speaking clearer, speaking in sentences, and using the correct proper nouns and verbs.  Today, you would never know that he had any speech issues when he was little.

    Trust your gut.  When my son was about 2 and not saying anything I had a feeling something wasn't right.  I would bring it up to his then pediatrician and get told that as long as he learned a new word every month that he was fine.  I wasn't too pushy with the doctor when maybe I should have been.  HTH

  • Same story over here.  DD arrived at 25w2d and she is turning 3 in January.  Main delay is speech, but we have seen marked improvement since using daycare 3 days per week in addition to private speech therapy.  We are getting evaluated for an integrated pre-school program in the public school system in the coming weeks.  I have a feeling that DD was pre-destined to be small because of genetics, and being a preemie made that worse.  She was also pre-destined to be be smart and stubborn.  Ha, ha.  So, we shall see as she gets older how she compares to her chronological peers. 
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