Identical twins who share a placenta can also end up sharing their blood supply, and when that sharing goes wrong one baby is starved while the other is overloaded. Laser surgery inside the womb can separate the two circulations and give both babies a chance. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026…

A small number of babies born very early cannot be weaned off the breathing machine, and their team eventually raises the possibility of a tracheostomy — a small breathing tube placed through an opening in the front of the neck. Three studies published in 2025 and 2026 followed these children from…

Cytomegalovirus is a very common virus that usually causes nothing worse than a mild cold — unless it is caught for the first time during pregnancy, when it can pass to the baby and sometimes affect hearing or brain development. Four studies published in the past year now show that an antiviral…

Many babies born very early develop a long-term lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and some also develop high blood pressure in the lung's blood vessels, called pulmonary hypertension. Four studies from 2025 and 2026 examined how doctors find this vessel problem, how they treat it…

Every newborn has a few drops of blood taken from the heel in the first days of life, and one of the conditions that blood is checked for is congenital adrenal hyperplasia — a treatable hormone disorder that can be fatal if missed. For decades this particular test has raised far more false alarms…

Babies born with serious heart defects can develop a dangerous bowel illness called necrotizing enterocolitis, which most people associate with very premature infants. Three recent studies show that in full-term babies with critical heart disease it is uncommon — roughly two to seven in every…

A large study from Denmark followed more than 750,000 pregnancies and asked whether women who were taking a GLP-1 weight-loss or diabetes injection around the time they conceived were more likely to give birth early. The answer turned out to depend on why the medicine had been prescribed. Women who…

For some babies born very early, the hardest question is not whether they will survive but how they will finally leave the hospital breathing on their own. Doctors in Memphis, Tennessee, studied 45 such infants and describe a way of removing the breathing tube and switching to strong support…

When a premature baby loses much of the intestine to a bowel emergency, the question families live with is whether the gut that remains will one day absorb enough food on its own. A 2025 report from Qatar found that four in five extremely premature babies with short bowel syndrome eventually came…

Surgery to close a baby's spina bifida before birth is no longer a single operation. There are now four ways to do it, and each protects something different — the mother's womb, the length of the pregnancy, or the child's chance of walking and of avoiding a brain shunt. No approach came out ahead…

Babies born too early sometimes develop high blood pressure in newborn intensive care, and doctors treat it — but no guideline says which medicine to use. Two 2025 studies fill in opposite ends of the picture: one found a large American hospital reached for the same drug about 61% of the time, out…

Spinal muscular atrophy is a rare inherited condition that weakens the nerves controlling movement and breathing, and it was once the most common genetic cause of death in babies. Three medicines can now change its course — but they work far better when given before a baby shows any symptoms. That…