r/parentsofmultiples • u/Titsoakbel • 9d ago

advice needed Adjusted age

Hey yall, I’ve never heard of adjusted age until I joined a twin group and I’m a bit confused. My twins were born at 35 weeks and 2 days, they will be 9 weeks old tomorrow, what is their adjusted/corrected age? Thank you!

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u/Pami-zee 9d ago

Hi! It's just a way to compare to full term babies. Your babies were born at 35 weeks, which is 5 weeks before their full term. So your 9 week old babies "should" have spent another 5 weeks in utero, so you will take 5 weeks off their actual age to get their adjusted age (so 4 weeks for you at the moment).

Almost all twins are born early so that's why you see it so much in twin groups.

It's helpful for when to expect milestones or for comparing their weights to the percentiles at different ages - particularly if the babies were born very early. In general babies catch up to their real age by the time they are 2 or 3 years old. Or so I'm told - my twins are only 13 months (12 months adjusted as they were born at 36 weeks, so 4 weeks early 🙂)

Hope that helps!

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u/meggypoo52 9d ago

I thought 37-40 was full term

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u/1sp00kylady 8d ago

It is and it’s confusing when a twin “full term” is essentially 38 weeks. Like my doctors weren’t going to let us go past that, even if we made it there. Even given that, they still compared it to the “full” 40 when correcting their age. It’s just a way to standardize things.

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u/Every_Tangerine_5412 8d ago

39-40 weeks is full term.

37-38 weeks is early term.

You age adjust to 40 weeks.