5% of all Babies born in Belize are premature. It's a complication that can occur for a number of reasons, either the mother is too young, too old, or in poor health.
And while the birth of a preemie is often cause for great anxiety over whether or not the child will survive, the majority of them pull through.
It's a struggle that's celebrated annually on World Premature day when hospital staff and premie parents don purple and share success stories about the babies that never stop fighting. We found at the KHMH today:
Cherisse Halsall:
"Now, your T-shirt says fight like a preemie, how hard do they fight?"
Ashley Charlesworth, Nurse, NICU
"Very, very, very hard I can't even stress that enough sometimes preemie babies, sometimes we think maybe this is too much more this baby and that baby preserves that baby goes home, that bay fights because honestly sometimes we think to ourselves maybe this one won't make it and mein, he or she still makes it. That's why we say our logo fight like a Preemie because they never give up."
"I have seen babies so small that they could fit in the palm of my hand go home too big for me to cuddle. And they make it well, they progress well in life, the mothers bring them back so we can see, they send updated pictures as you can see here and it's a warm feeling when you see that."
"Sometimes it's a happy experience sometimes it's a heart-wrenching experience dealing with these fragile babies. It's important to recognize world Prematurity day because we have a lot of premature babies being born and it all comes down to lifestyle how pregnant women take care of themselves how early they go into having babies, meaning their age and everything. We have sometimes 15 year old with premature babies, we have sometimes 43-year-olds with premature babies and how they take care of themselves, their diet, their exercise what they do from day to day sometimes they're on drugs, sometimes they don't eat properly and they have other underlying conditions like hypertension, diabetes, thyroid problems that can cause prematurity so us highlighting world prematurity day is just like awareness so everyone can know that there are steps to take when you decide to get pregnant to prevent prematurity when you have a premature baby you have one leg in one leg out, you don't know if that baby will survive or if that baby will die and sometimes when they survive they have a lot of life long issues with them. Sometimes they're blind sometimes they go deaf, consequences of being premature."
"The most important thing is space your pregnancies, your body needs time to recuperate, needs time to recover after pregnancy. Sometimes we see back to back to back pregnancies and then sometimes they're all premature. Every single one is premature. Space your pregnancies, go to your clinic, follow your doctor's orders, I cannot stress enough how much to follow the doctor's orders. Sometimes these mothers are placed on bed rest and they feel like oh well I feel fine and they still go out and do this and do that, simple activities in the house like sweeping the house, bedrest means bedrest lie down, don't get up just to use the bathroom, just to take a shower, that's it."
Neruli Williams, Unit Manager, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
"Usually each year we bring back the babies who graduated from our NICU. This year because of the pandemic we cannot do that so because of that we decided to do it in the lobby to decorate the lobby to create awareness in whoever visits the hospital. The theme this year is together for babies born too early, caring for the future. It basically means that everybody is in this together and the babies are the future of the world you know. In regards to the color, it's an initiative of march of dimes which their color is purple so we celebrate it using purple to create awareness. We won't be having anybody coming into the institution today just for this but we do have parents bringing video, sending videos and pictures. So we will be running those on our television in the lobby throughout the day."
"I must say. I am very proud to be a part of the NICU team, doctors, nurses, support staff, they work very hard and are very dedicated at other times they stay above the time of work because we have 12 hours but if they need to stay 13 hours or 14 hours, 11 ½. 12 ½ they do. A lot of the time we are short-staffed so we do have nurses willing to come in and do an extra shift."
50% of the KHMH's admissions for birth turn out to be for premature birth but that percentage is skewed due to the hospital's role as a referral hospital for high risk cases.
