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, 1 reply)

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)