Babies born much too early, before 32 weeks of pregnancy, need very careful feeding while they grow in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Breast milk — either the mother's own milk or carefully screened donated milk from other mothers — is the recommended foundation for these babies. But…

If your baby is in a neonatal intensive care unit, you have probably seen a curved chart on a screen or on the wall, with a dot marking your baby's weight each day. That chart answers a deceptively simple question: is this baby growing the way we would hope? For a baby born early, the answer is…

When a baby is born too early or too sick, the NICU becomes the centre of the family's world. And in that world, information is everything — but it does not always arrive in a form that helps.

When a baby is born more than three months early, breathing is one of the first and most urgent medical challenges. Premature lungs are too immature to work on their own, and many extremely premature babies develop a chronic lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) during their NICU…

If your baby is premature and in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), you may have heard the word “NEC” spoken quietly by the medical team, or seen it listed among the risks of prematurity. NEC stands for necrotizing enterocolitis — a name that sounds alarming, and which describes something…

Necrotizing enterocolitis — usually shortened to NEC — is one of the most serious illnesses that can affect a premature baby. It is an inflammation and injury of the bowel that can come on quickly and make a baby very unwell. When NEC is diagnosed, the response is much the same in hospitals…

If your baby is in a neonatal intensive care unit — a NICU — you already know that the world can change very quickly. You learn the rhythm of monitors and alarms. You learn which nurses bring comfort and which machines mean progress. And then, sometimes, in the space of a few hours, everything you…

Necrotizing enterocolitis — NEC for short — is a serious bowel illness that mainly affects babies born very early. Most babies with NEC are treated without an operation, with rest for the bowel, antibiotics, and nutrition given through a vein. But in roughly one in three cases, the illness becomes…

If your baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), you may have noticed that healthcare staff regularly take small samples of blood and send them to a machine for analysis. These are called blood gas tests, and they are the single most frequently ordered test for babies in the NICU []…

When a baby is born many weeks early, the lungs are often the part of the body least ready for the outside world. Deep inside healthy lungs is a soapy, slippery substance called surfactant. It coats the millions of tiny air sacs and keeps them from collapsing each time the baby breathes out, the…

If your baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit, you have almost certainly fixed your eyes on the oxygen saturation reading — the percentage number on the monitor that rises and falls with every breath. Nurses watch it constantly. Alarms sound when it drops below a threshold. It may have become…

Before a baby is born, it doesn't use its lungs — it gets all the oxygen it needs from its mother through the placenta. Because the lungs aren't working yet, the fetal body has a clever shortcut: a small blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus that diverts blood away from the lungs and straight…