A premature baby is a neonate born before 37 weeks gestation, which accounts for between 8 and 10 percent of all births in the U.S., according to the National Institutes of Health. While some premature infants born very close to 37 weeks gestation are able to remain with mom after being born and go home with mom from the hospital, the majority of premature babies are admitted to a specialized nursery, or neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where the physicians, respiratory therapists and nurses are trained to care for premature babies and their unique needs. While in the NICU, there are 3 key developmental goals the infant is working towards meeting: maintaining temperature, breathing without assistance, and eating from a bottle or breast. Each baby is different and has various needs to be met while hospitalized, but these three goals are universal to all neonates.
Maintaining Temperature
Maintaining temperature is difficult for premature babies because their surface area, their skin, is quite large in comparison to their mass, or weight. With little fat to keep them warm and many demands on their calories for breathing, digesting food and growing, there is not a lot of energy left to assist with maintaining temperature. Your premature infant will be in an isolette or radiant warmer until she is able to stay warm on her own. She will need to keep her temperature in the normal range, around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with clothes, blankets and a hat on before she can go home.
Breathing Without Assistance
Breathing can be a very exhausting activity for premature babies. Due to an immature neurological system, they sometimes forget to breathe and have periods of time called apnea when they are not breathing at all. They also get tired very easily, for breathing uses a lot of calories, and may become too tired to breath on their own. When premature babies are too tired to breath on their own, they require assistance from a machine called a ventilator, which breathes for them until they are strong enough to try again on their own. As your premature baby grows bigger, stronger and more neurologically mature, he will have more energy to breathe and his maturing neurological system will help him remember to take each breath. One of the requirements for going home from the hospital is to breathe on his own without having times of apnea.
Eating From the Bottle or Breast
Eating by mouth is a difficult task for a premature baby. Whether bottle-feeding or breastfeeding, your baby will need to learn to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing. The rhythmical sucking, followed by a pause to swallow and take a few breaths before returning to sucking again, may be very tiring for him and will be a slow process to learn. He may need a tube in his nose or mouth that ends in his stomach, so that if he is unable to take his whole bottle by mouth or complete his nursing session, or simply needs a rest to conserve calories, he is still able to receive his full feedings. Before being discharged from the hospital, he will need to be eating all his meals by bottle or breast.
