Born three months early
I weighed in at a whopping 1 pound 13 ounces (thought it was 2 pounds 10 ounces for ages, but my mother corrected me recently -- 2:10 was my birth time), spent 2 months in the NICU and was in the top ten lowest surviving birth weights that year in the hospital where I was born.

Aside from plain old not dying, I also managed to survive with no brain damage, no debilitating neurological conditions and only asthma and a heart problem to show for it (the latter would provide me with another brush with death 17 years later), which I'm told impressed the doctors just as much as my living in the first place. The story goes that after I was whisked away from my exhausted mother's arms and secured in an incubator, the doctor popped in to warn my mother that I'd probably die before the day was out. Much to my grandmother's horror, my lovely mother told the doctor I would live and he could fuck off. In the 33 years since, her attitude toward doctors has yet to improve.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 2:09, 7 replies)

Clicky
For your mum telling the doctors to fuck off! You obviously had the same attitude from an early age!
(Sir Itchalot has a very self-referential signature, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 12:00, closed)

Yup, give your mother a click
from me too!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 12:32, closed)

As the mum of a 1lb 10oz preemie, a click for your mum from me too!
(annierat1 doesn't have anything interesting to add on, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 18:57, closed)

There's a small one!
I hope your baby did even better than me.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 2:21, closed)

He’s doing great thanks! Still a little way to go to do as well as you, he’s only 4, but starting mainstream school in September, with mainly just a lazy eye, hyper mobility and a slight lack of fine motor skills. Considering he didn’t learn to eat properly till late last year (4th birthday last January was the first year he actually had a cake!), and we never even knew if he would walk, talk etc, I’m more than happy with that! Mentally, he’s more than all there, he’s a future b3tan for sure (aka he can be a little git) – was being told off by his dad the other week, dad had a bad cold and had lost his voice. LO walks right up to him as he’s in mid rant, goes eye to eye (as you can tell, LO is really scared of dad ;-), then in true ‘Nelson the bully’ style goes ‘Ha haaaaaa, you can’t shout at me!’ Needless to say he was banished from the room before we both pissed ourselves laughing!
(annierat1 doesn't have anything interesting to add on, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 14:19, closed)

Six months is baked enough ...
I was born eleven weeks early, and also given rather a poor prognosis. If they'd realized quite how risky it had been for my Mum, I'd have been scrambled with a coat hanger a few days before. As it was, after a tricky birth I was whisked away to ICU.

I was then, at five or six months diagnosed with hydrocephalus, and a shunt was inserted. To quote a doctor at the time "Mrs F, your child will probably have severe learning difficulties. at the very least he'll be crap at maths."

As I haven't needed any shunt revisions, (I.e. More brain surgery to put a new shunt in when the old one fails), I toddled off a few years ago to see the doctor who had put it in in order to find out whether or not i was still using it.. In his very best 'speaking to special kids' voice, he told me that i was still using it, and that this made me the medical equivalent of a super rare pokemon. He then asked me what i was doing next year.

The look on his face when i replied that I was off to uni to study physics and philosophy was priceless.

My mum is still a bit annoyed with the doctors for telling her i was going to die, then that id be retarded but I think shes forgiven them on the grounds of saving my life. But its always nice to hear from someone else that six months is all you need!
(Foxinsockssir, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 19:13, closed)

Good on your mum!
And good on you for proving 'em all wrong. My mother's a polio survivor and she was warned that trying to have even one baby would be very risky, so having me end up relatively healthy was even more of a success for her. I'm glad I didn't have to prove my worth to the NICU staff with what you went through, though -- my mother dislikes doctors so much that I often thought I'd have had to be missing an arm for her to take me in for any medical treatment above routine shots!
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 2:21, closed)