17 articles in Growth & Nutrition
A new study of very premature babies offers a piece of reassuring news for families: giving a baby more of their mother's or donor breast milk in the very first hours of life helped babies reach full feeds faster and grow better, and it did not upset the community of helpful bacteria taking root in…
Premature babies are almost always given a daily iron supplement, because being born early means missing out on the iron a baby normally stockpiles in the last months of pregnancy — and iron is essential for healthy blood and a developing brain. But parents and doctors have wondered whether that…
When a baby is born extremely early, weighing less than a bag of sugar, the tiny stomach and intestines are not ready to handle milk, so nourishment has to be delivered straight into the bloodstream through a thin tube. For years, doctors believed that giving these babies plenty of protein right…
A new study of 146 very premature babies in China tested whether adding bovine colostrum — the rich "first milk" a cow makes just after giving birth — to their mothers' milk would help them digest feeds more easily than a standard cow's-milk supplement. The answer was no: babies given colostrum had…
Premature babies in intensive care have traditionally been fed set amounts of milk at set times. A hospital in Israel switched to letting babies lead — feeding when they showed they were hungry and stopping when they were full — and then followed 115 children to age two. The babies who led went…
A study of 60 premature babies born at 28 to 32 weeks found that increasing their daily milk feeds a little faster helped them reach full feeds sooner, with no cases of the serious bowel disease NEC and no more feeding problems than a slower schedule. Using a painless light sensor on the skin…
A study from a hospital in Beijing followed premature babies who were fed breast milk with extra nutrients added in one of two ways: a fixed "one-size" recipe, or a personalized recipe tailored to each baby. In the early months, the personalized group grew better—bigger head size, better weight…
When a baby is born many weeks early, breast milk is the best food a parent can give — but on its own it does not contain enough protein, calcium, and calories for a tiny baby who still needs to grow at the rapid pace of the womb. For decades, NICU teams have solved this by "fortifying" milk…
Very premature babies often develop a low level of phosphate — a mineral essential for growth — in their first week of life, and a Norwegian study found that one in three did. Babies who were unusually small at birth for their stage of pregnancy were affected much earlier and much more often…
When a baby is born very early or too sick to feed by mouth, nutrition is given straight into a vein—a method called parenteral nutrition. A large review that combined 20 separate clinical trials, involving 1,904 newborns, found that one modern fat blend used in that intravenous feeding, called…
Premature babies often struggle to grow as quickly as they would have inside the womb, and doctors have long searched for safe ways to help. Two new clinical trials tested a simple, inexpensive idea: giving tiny babies a measured amount of extra salt (sodium). One trial found that extra salt helped…
When a baby is born, the first thing the care team does is measure its weight, length, and head size and compare those numbers to other babies born at the same point in pregnancy. Two 2026 studies from the same research group rebuilt these comparison charts using modern methods and very large…