Showing posts with label premature babies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label premature babies. Show all posts

The premature baby

A baby weighing much under 5 pounds will probably need to remain in hospital where an incubator and expert care are available.

It's hard to get over your anxiety


Most premature babies develop quite normally, allowing for their prematurity. Though they gain weight slowly at first, they usually gain and grow more rapidly for a while later to make up for this. Naturally, they cannot make up for their youngness. The baby who was born 2 months early and has become "1 year old" should be thought of as really a 10-month-old.


By the time a premature baby weighs 6 pounds, he needs no more coddling or worrying than any baby, but this is very hard for the parents to believe. In the beginning the doctor may have cautioned them against being too optimistic, and only gradually became more reassuring. The baby probably had to be in an incubator, watched constantly by nurses and doctors, and probably had to be fed by tube at first. The parents might not have been able to get near him most of that time, though most hospitals are now encouraging parents to touch and, where possible, hold and feed their premature babies from the very beginning.