The medical community has made amazing advances in the last several decades in caring for premature babies. Many young adults today are living healthy and happy lives thanks to these advances. Despite these medical successes, premature babies continue to require special treatment while in the hospital as well as when they are brought home.

In the Hospital

• Help with Breathing

While the premature baby’s external appearance clearly shows his underdevelopment, vital internal organs are also affected. Most premature babies have problems in breathing. Their neurological systems are not fully programmed. Breathing is not yet automatic, and sometimes simply stops. For this reason, premature babies are placed in isolation in ventilators, helping them to breathe until their lungs and neurological systems development can enable them to breathe successfully on their own. Some premature babies require many weeks in a ventilator until their bodies are capable of breathing reliably.

• Bonding through Speech

Newborns bond with their parents or other loving caregivers through intimate contact such as soft speech and gentle touching. Touching is difficult, and in some cases severely restricted, when the baby is in a ventilator. Voice, however, can reach through this barrier. It takes little time for a baby to recognize and be comforted by a parent’s or nurse’s voice. Whenever parents speak softly to the baby, the comforting sounds give the baby a feeling of safety and security.

• Bonding through Touch

When the baby’s development reaches a point where the doctors feel that parents can safely touch the child while he is in the ventilator, they should do so with considered caution. The premature child is frail and can’t be handled of lifted, but it can be caressed. The initial tendency is to lightly touch the child with a finger. This may feel more like an irritation than a touch. Make your touch firm but gentle. Placing your finger into the child’s hand will prompt the baby to clutch the finger applying a comfortable natural pressure.

• Transition from Ventilator to Parent

It may seem like forever to the parents, but eventually, the baby’s development will reach a point where he would have been had the birth been closer to full term. It will then be possible, with medical supervision, to actually pick up and hold the baby as you have been longing to do. The nurse may ask you to actually wash and change the baby. Now your mutual bonding can begin in earnest. Soon you’ll all be heading home.

The Trip Home

• Maintaining Temperature

When it’s finally time to take your new baby home, dress the baby in clothing that is appropriate for the weather and temperature. If it’s hot out, dress the baby to allow comforting air flow. If it’s cold, make sure that the baby is bundled up warmly and that his face is protected for chilling winds. If you’re traveling home in a taxi or family car, don’t forget about the change in temperature in the vehicle. If the baby is bundled up against the cold, he’ll be pretty uncomfortable in a heated automobile. Be prepared to remove blankets or clothing as necessary. The opposite condition is equally troublesome. A baby that is dressed for hot weather will be uncomfortable chilled in an air conditioned vehicle. Bring a blanket, just in case.

Supporting Baby’s Head

When premature babies are ready to leave the hospital, they may be as healthy as a baby born at full term, but they will most probably be smaller and not physically strong. It is likely that the baby will be too small for a standard infant car seat, and his head will most likely require extra support or padding in the rear facing car seat. Make sure the driver proceeds slowly with limited bumps in the road, as he brings the valuable cargo home.

Early Life at Home

• Clothing the Premature Baby

It will take the premature child several months longer that the full term child to fit into most off-the-shelf baby clothes. You may need to buy clothing that is especially made for premature babies. Special diapers may be needed as well.

• Breast Feeding

If you have decided to breast feed your baby, a healthful choice, you may need to buy some nipple shields. Premature babies often have trouble sucking on the mother’s nipples. Silicone nipple shields are shaped to enable the baby to better suckle at feeding time.

• Ongoing Medical Support

Once your premature baby is safely in your home, routine visits to the pediatrician are all that is usually necessary. In some cases, however, the baby may require additional medical supervision and special nutritional requirements. In either case, your baby would not have been released from the hospital if there was any critical problem. With your loving care and routine medical supervision, you’ll soon look back at the premature experience as a simple milestone for you beautiful healthy child.

Amy Brown, a stay-at-home mom, is an editor of Livesnet, a site offering baby gear reviews and parenting tips. She’s surely willing to share her own experience and tips. Please visit Livesnet and read recent hot articles on the First Years Wave Stroller.

Worldwide, 13 million babies are born preterm each year and one million of those die each year as a result of their early birth. Today (November 17th, 2011) is the first-ever World Prematurity Day, part of the March of Dime’s Prematurity Awareness Month, to honor these premature infants and raise awareness about the importance of striving to give every baby a healthy start in life.

So today, I not only praise the March of Dimes for helping my preemie twins, Macy and Mallory, survive almost eighteen years ago, but I also praise my preemie twins themselves for the fine young ladies they have turned out to be. Read our story.

Macy recently attended the FCCLA Cluster Meeting in Minneapolis and was so excited to tell me that one of the presentations at the convention was the March of Dimes talking about World Prematurity Day. I am hoping she decides to do a Star Project on being a preemie and share her miraculous story.

Premature babies—they’re fragile and need as much nutrition as possible, even more so than “regular babies” to gain the strength and energy they need to survive. While breast milk and formula milk are designed to give that proper nutrition, a premature baby’s underdeveloped gut makes it difficult to absorb proper nutrients from either milk substances. But according to Australian researchers, a different kind of milk may just be able to give premature babies the boost they need–wallaby milk.

That’s right, according to a team of researchers from Deakin University’s Institute for Technology in Melbourne, tamar wallabies (cousins to the Kangaroo) produce a milk contain special proteins that can actually help strengthen and repair a human premature baby’s gut, which ultimately means he or she will be able to obtain more nourishment.

That’s not to say that a premature baby’s new food source will come from wallabies. Instead it’s supposed to serve as a supplement to kick-start gut development so that babies can get all the beneficial value of their mother’s milk.

So don’t think you need to book your next flight Down Under tomorrow—researchers aren’t really encouraging the consumption of wallaby milk (which have also said to contain natural antibiotics). Rather, they are trying to identify the same wallaby milk proteins in humans so that they can discover a way to make human babies produce those identical proteins naturally. While research is only in its developmental stages, lead researcher Kevin Nicholas says he expects these proteins to be located in the fetus or placenta.

But for now health experts say just stick with the breast milk until further research has been concluded—breast milk contains colostrums, bunch of growth nutrients which are also high in protein, antibodies, carbohydrates but low in fat which is key (premature babies have a difficult time processing high-fat substances).

This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at accredited online colleges about education, college, student, teacher, money and movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.

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It is almost fact that women do not sleep great throughout their pregnancy, but new research links premature birth to poor sleep quality in both early and late stages of pregnancy. Early pregnancy, in weeks 14 through 16, showed a 25% increase in premature births as reported by Michele L. Okun of the University of Pittsburgh. She also reported that in later stages of pregnancy the odds increased by 18%. The study included 166 pregnant women using self reporting questionnaires which included the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Interestingly enough sleep quality in the second trimester did not relate to premature birth.

Premature birth has increased from roughly 9% to 12% in the past 25 years. Dr. Okun also said that poor sleep has been linked to more inflammation in the body, which she suggests might be the reason for the premature childbirth. A premature birth is a birth that occurs before the 37th week of pregnancy. There are several causes of premature birth including illness during pregnancy, obesity and stress. Some maternal behaviors including, drug use, smoking and drinking alcohol are known for increasing the odds of a premature birth.

Having a premature infant is extremely expense because premature infant care ranges from $20k and $100k. A single day of neonatal intensive care can cost as much as $3000 per day.

If you are experiencing trouble sleeping be sure to consult your doctor, so they can try to help you manage your sleeplessness. There has been other studies that link caffeine and pregnancy, that might be of interest to you. If you want to lower your risk of premature birth try eating more fish. According to this study pregnant women who eat fish a few times a week may be less likely to deliver early. Check out this odd study that links mouthwash to lower risk of premature birth. There are plenty of strange and unusual ways to lower your risk of having a premature birth. Have any tips for catching more “Zzzz’s” when you are pregnant? Please share below in the comments.

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Prenatal vitamins with docosahexaenoic acid, also known as DHA are one more way of protecting baby against some of the developmental problems that can follow premature birth in expectant mothers should start taking them as soon as they know they are pregnant. However, if the mother has not taken DHA before giving birth, supplemental DHA can still help protect the premature baby’s brain.

DHA is an essential fatty acid the baby’s body uses to make the brain. It is especially important during the 28th to 40th weeks of pregnancy, when the brain and central nervous system are busy wiring connections and growing blood vessels for their blood supply. Even when babies are carried to term, infants born to mothers who took at least 300 mg of DHA a day (the average woman’s diet provides just 45 to 115 mg of DHA a day) have better vision and faster mental development.

Dutch researchers measured the DHA in umbilical cord blood to see if a mother’s consumption of this essential fatty acid influenced the child’s later mental development. They found that by the age of seven years, children born to mothers who had consumed the most DHA had better eye-hand coordination. They tended to fidget less while sitting still. They had larger vocabularies, spoke in longer sentences, and scored higher on tests of verbal comprehension. The benefits of DHA before birth were significant for both boys and girls and for children born at full term and for children who were born prematurely. But DHA can also help preemies after they were born.

A child born prematurely is still developing brain and central nervous system tissue and connections although outside the womb. Ensuring that the baby receives DHA from breast milk by asking the mother to take a DHA supplement reduces rates of mental retardation and vision loss among both girls and boys, although the effect is greater for girls. Researchers believe that baby boys have faster metabolisms and may need more DHA than baby girls. Also, estrogen helps the body convert other omega-3 essential fatty acids in the diet into the DHA needed for brain development, so baby girls may get greater benefits from the full range of fatty acids in their diets than baby boys.

While 300 mg a day is an appropriate daily dosage of DHA for mothers who are still carrying their babies, most experts recommend 1,000 mg a day for mothers nursing preemies. Many doctors will order tests of the mother’s breast milk for DHA content, and if the DHA the mother takes is not finding its way into the breast milk, the baby will be given a separate DHA supplement. The benefits of DHA for kids are greatest for babies who weighed 1250 g (about 2-1/2 pounds) or less at birth.

What about DHA for kids after your child is discharged from the hospital? If you are breastfeeding, be sure to continue taking your own DHA supplement. If you are giving your child formula, be sure it contains DHA.

When your child no longer is fed exclusively milk and formula, you can give your child the more expensive docosahexaenoic acid single-cell oil (DHASCO), which is DHA processed from algae grown in cultivation tanks, often offered as “DHA for kids.”

Alternatively, you may prefer to give your child a high-quality fish oil for children, which provides DHA along with other essential fatty acids. Flaxseed oil and cod liver oil also provide DHA. The choice of the product is not as important as making sure the child receives all the essential fatty acids needed for healthy development every day.

Vitamin E is essential to the development of the baby before and after birth, but vitamin E deficiencies in babies carried to term are very rare. Many preemies, however, are given vitamin E to prevent a condition called retinopathy of prematurity.

Also known as retrolental fibroplasia, retinopathy of prematurity is the leading cause of blindness in children. When children are carried for the full nine months in the womb, the last 12 weeks are especially active for the growth of the eye. The blood vessels supplying the retina gradually spread over its surface and stop their progression at about the time of birth.

In some (but fortunately not all) babies who are born prematurely, a barrier to the growth of normal blood vessels encircles the eye. First, the sudden reduction in available oxygen caused by premature growth kills some of the delicate, developing blood vessels in the retina. The the retina attempts to grow new, twisted and fragile blood vessels to replace them.

Abnormal blood vessels grow forward from the retina instead of across it and are gradually covered with scar tissue. This ring of scar tissue, in some cases, can pull on the retina. In a minority of cases, the retina becomes completely detached and blindness may result.

Premature children are at risk of developing ROP when they are exposed to high levels of oxygen, variations in light and temperature, and certain medications. Fortunately, most premature infants do not develop ROP, and most babies with ROP get better spontaneously. However, in the United States alone there are over 150,000 cases of the disease.

Between 1981 and 1984, six clinical studies confirmed the usefulness of vitamin E in preventing the progression of ROP to its most serious forms. One study of preterm infants supplemented with vitamin E found that none of the 99 surviving infants developed worse than stage 2 ROP (a stage from which the eyes recover on their own), while three infants in a control group who were not given vitamin E were blinded in both eyes. Another study found that infants given vitamin E in the very first hours of their lives did not develop ROP at all. Yet another study found that vitamin E preserved the embryonic character of spindle cells in babies delivered at least 28 weeks after conception, keeping these cells from triggering the development of misplaced, enlarged, and twisted blood vessels.

Since infants born prematurely are placed in round-the-clock neonatal care, decisions about the administration of supplements have to be made by the physician. Parents are urged, however, to discuss vitamin E supplementation with their child’s physician.

If your child has this condition, it is not necessarily anyone’s fault. There were a large number of cases of retinopathy of prematurity in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s when incubators were first introduced for premature baby care, but the kinds of accidents that once happened in incubators are now very rare.

Vitamin E deficiency does not cause this condition, and taking vitamin E during pregnancy won’t reduce the risk. In this rare condition, vitamin E is essentially a medication for an unfortunate complication of early birth.

According to a Swedish study published in Diabetes Care (a publication from the American Diabetes Association), babies born premature (before 37 weeks gestational age) have a slightly higher risk of developing diabetes at some point in their lifetime.

Preterm birth, including late preterm birth, is associated with a modestly increased risk of diabetes in young Swedish adults. These findings have important public health implications given the increasing number of preterm births and the large disease burden of diabetes, particularly when diagnosed in young adulthood.

Mind you, this study was done in Sweden, not the United States, so results may be different for American babies born prematurely. My guess is that the percentage may be even higher here in the states. Why? Because the we have a higher rate of premature births. And we also have a higher risk factors involved, such as obesity – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that two thirds of Americans are overweight.

That being said, diabetes needle disposal as well as medical waste disposal in general is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as infectious waste has the ability to cause human and environmental harm if not properly disposed. BioMedical Waste Solutions offers a more environmentally friendly process of treatment and disposal by using an autoclave, or steam sterilization, to render your waste noninfectious and is OSHA compliant.

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What does one give as Gifts for a new baby born too soon? Since the situation of a premature infant is definitely different than that of a healthy newborn, normal Baby gifts per se (ie clothing, toys, bottles, etc.) are not recommended. Here’s five ideas on what to send or bring over to new parents of a premature baby.

1. Jewelry – a locket pendant necklace for the new mom to wear with a photo of her baby is a great remembrance. Engraving the locket with the baby’s initials is even more appreciated.

2. Flowers – send fresh flowers with an inspirational message saying you are thinking of them and praying for their baby.

3. Food – offer to bring over a home-cooked meal as parents get sick of hospital food and eating fast food on the run.

4. Stuffed Animals – be sure the stuffed animal is small enough (say 3″ – 4″ wide/high) to fit inside of the isolette with the baby. The parents will think of you when they see it and give them something to talk about to the baby.

5. Volunteer – offer to babysit other siblings at home or to run errands that parents can’t get done while they are away at the hospital. If the parent is a co-worker, offering to transfer some of your vacation hours over is a wonderful gesture.

Feeding can be an issue for any new mom. Should you breastfeed or use formula? What is the proper way to hold your newborn for feeding? How do you get a baby to latch on? What can you do about colic? Face it: there’s a definite learning curve when it comes to caring for an infant, even if you read every book on the market. And it can be especially difficult if your baby is born prematurely. Many preemies cannot feed normally and may have trouble swallowing and breathing at the same time (at least at first). Although your milk is the best thing for them, they may not be able to breastfeed. They could also need additional vitamins or other nutrients. Because of this, you may have to seek out alternative ways to get them the nutrition they need. Here are a few options.
1. Intravenous. If your baby is born more than eight weeks early, they will likely need to be fed intravenously for awhile. However, this doesn’t mean that they will never make the switch to breastfeeding. If you plan to give them mother’s milk at some point, you will need to start pumping your milk right away to ensure that it doesn’t dry up. The milk can be frozen for later use just in case they refuse to latch on.

2. Tube feeding. In addition to intravenous nutrients, the NICU will probably give your baby formula through a feeding tube as soon as possible to supplement their diet and get their digestive system in good working order before they are sent home (although you may need to continue this regimen for awhile if they can’t seem to regulate breathing and eating).

3. Eye dropper vs. bottle. While your preemie is still pretty small, they certainly won’t be able to breastfeed, but they might also have problems with a regular size of bottle. While you can find a very small bottle (or preemie nipples) suited to feeding a smaller infant, you may have to employ other tactics if you find they have trouble sucking and swallowing. For this instance, and eyedropper may work and you can often find them with liquid measurement lines to make sure you are not over- or under-feeding.

4. Finger feeding. If your baby has become accustomed to bottle feeding (or another method) and is reluctant to latch on when you try to breastfeed, you may need to get them accustomed to the experience. Finger feeding is an excellent way to accomplish this. You will need a feeding tube, a bottle that fits to the tube, and reserved milk or formula. From there you simply wash your hands well, position the end of the tube parallel to your finger, and prompt your baby to feed (tickle the lip, etc.). Once they have become comfortable with this method, they should have less trouble latching on.

5. Breast feeding. Once your preemie reaches what would have been full term (40 weeks), they should be ready to begin breastfeeding (barring other problems like breathing, heart rate, etc.). They will likely still need some supplemental formula for additional nutrients, but before long they should be feeding every 2-3 hours and soiling diapers 7-8 times a day, just like a full-term baby.

Sarah Danielson writes for EverydayHealth.com where you can find answers to all of your health related questions.

If you’ve already had one preemie baby, then you know what complications may result in a child’s health and development. It can be a very nerve-wracking experience for any parent, and is incredibly dangerous for your newborn. For this reason, it is extremely important that you understand the risk factors in having another premature baby, and do your best to avoid these risks. Here, we will discuss some of the risks, as well as give you some advice on how to eliminate them if possible.

Alcohol Use

Consuming alcohol while pregnant not only puts you at risk for a premature birth, but also puts your baby in danger of a variety of other dangerous health issues—such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. It is incredibly important that you understand the serious nature of this, and refrain from consuming any alcoholic beverages while pregnant.

Smoking

Like alcohol, smoking cigarettes is one of the greatest risk factors for the birth of premature babies. The wonderful news is that it is also quite easily controlled. If you are a smoker, and are considering getting pregnant or find that you are pregnant, it is very much encouraged that you quit smoking to avoid birth complications and protect the health of your newborn.

Already Having One Premature Baby

Unfortunately this risk factor is unavoidable, but it is important to understand that having already given birth prematurely puts you at risk for having another early birth. This is particularly true if the births are close together. Because there is nothing you can do about this factor, it is vital that you take all the measures you can control to avoid a premature birth.

Poor Nutrition

Maintaining proper nutrition and keeping a healthy weight are vital to ensuring that no complications arise during your pregnancy. Be sure to keep your BMI in a healthy range, and eat a variety of nutrients. By no means should you be dieting during this time, but eating a healthy and well-balanced meal to provide for both you and the baby.

Age

This is yet another factor that cannot be controlled, however it is important that you be aware of it. Women under the age of 18 and above the age of 30 have a greater risk of giving birth prematurely than those within the range. Again, if this applies to you it is absolutely essential that you take as many controlled precautions as possible.

Untreated Infections

If you are planning a pregnancy, be sure to have any known infections cleared up prior to conceiving. Infections that are left untreated put you at a very high risk for giving birth prematurely. Work with your doctor if you develop an infection to clear the problem up as quickly as possible to reduce the chances of an early birth.

The best defense for avoiding another premature baby is to make sure you are in the best shape you can be—the healthier you are before and during a pregnancy, the less risk you’ll be at for complications. Be sure to work with your doctor to get the proper prenatal care, and keep a proper diet!

Sarah Danielson writes for Pitbull where you can find information on training, health, diet, and food for the popular and often misunderstood breed.