November is Prematurity Awareness Month®. The awareness month kicks off on November 1 with the release of the 2011 Premature Birth Report Card and today, November 17 marks World Prematurity Day.  The March of Dimes and partner organizations worldwide are asking everyone to help spread the world on the serious problem of premature birth. In the USA, 1 in 8 babies is born prematurely and as most of you know, we were that family who was one of those statistics.

 Yes, Our wonderful Thing 2 entered this world at week 25, weighing in at the micro-preemie weight of 1lb 8 oz !  Yes, I typed that correctly and so we began a journey of 8 long months in the hospital....EIGHT...MONTHS...LONG LONG STORY and it's still painful at times to date...still haven't really scrapbooked that part of our journey....there were many many many many days when this kid should've &; could've died but for some reason, God granted us favor and the boy kept fighting and 7 years later, he's still here and he's healthy and really working hard to get to what we call "mainstream."  And even though there are still residual effects (motor skills, speech issues, vison and hearing loss issues) from his traumatic birth, we are grateful and thankful for HIM-it could be worse-many preemies suffer brain injuries, retardation and other dibilitating health problems....I thank all the surgeons (7 surgeries), doctors and oh so spectacular nurses who cared about him like he was their own.  And to my 2 auntie-nurses Yolanda and Alice who are still in our lives, WE LOVE YOU!

 for more information on Premature Births, go to MARCH OF DIMES homepage .