In Massachusetts and some other US states, babies exposed to opioids before birth were automatically reported to child protective services, even when the parent was taking prescribed treatment. When one Boston hospital reported only specific safety concerns, reports fell by about half, with no…

Babies born very early are going home from hospital a few days later than they used to, and part of the reason seems to be how each hospital does things. A German hospital that taught parents early to tube-feed their babies sent many of them home about two weeks sooner, and those babies grew just…

A large US study tested whether sending short safe sleep videos by text message to pregnant women and new mothers with low incomes would change how they put their babies to sleep. Most mothers in every group were already following the main safe sleep advice, and the videos did not clearly change…

Researchers in the Netherlands compared premature babies cared for in a unit where parents could stay day and night and take on much of their baby's daily care with babies in traditional units where parents could visit but not stay overnight. After allowing for the fact that the babies in the…

A large new analysis of more than 234,000 newborns treated in America's children's hospital NICUs between 2017 and 2022 found that babies admitted to these units are, on average, sicker and more medically complex than before, and that the cost of their care has climbed accordingly. For families who…

Every day in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the care team gathers at a baby's bedside for "rounds" — the discussion of how the baby is doing and what comes next. Being there for that conversation is often a parent's clearest window into their baby's care, but distance, work schedules, and…

A new international study followed over 5,000 babies born at 22 or 23 weeks of pregnancy — roughly four months early — across 11 countries, and found that survival to going home depended heavily on where a baby was born: in the strongest-performing countries, well over half of 22-week babies…

Researchers in Ethiopia built a simple, five-question checklist that helps hospital staff spot which newborns in intensive care are most at risk of dying — using only things a nurse can observe, no lab tests needed. When they tested it at a second, different hospital, it worked just as well, a…

A large new look at 24 years of US government records on newborn deaths brings mostly good news: for almost every one of the leading medical causes of death in the first month of life, things have been getting better, year after year. But the same records point to one specific problem that has…

When a baby is born before 29 weeks of pregnancy—more than eleven weeks early—its chance of surviving depends enormously on where it is born. A major new study that combined data on nearly one million such babies from 44 countries found that about 61 out of every 100 survived to go home overall…

Some babies are born at a hospital that cannot provide the specialised care they turn out to need, and must be moved to a larger centre. Two research reviews published in 2026 looked at what that journey means for newborns. Together they show that the risks are real but largely preventable — and…

A big study across every special-care baby unit in one Canadian province found that when parents were trained and supported to become active members of their premature baby's care team, their babies went home about two and a half days earlier — and were no more likely to be readmitted to hospital…