Very rarely, a baby who seemed perfectly well at birth suddenly stops breathing during the first hours or days of life. Doctors call this sudden unexpected postnatal collapse. Two studies published in 2025 looked at the two questions families care about most: can these events be spotted early…

Newborn babies are born with very little vitamin K, the nutrient the body needs to make blood clot, and for six decades a single injection given shortly after birth has protected them from rare but devastating bleeding. A 2026 review gathers what is known about why babies are so vulnerable, how…

Very premature babies often need blood transfusions, and those transfusions usually use blood donated by adults. A trial in Italy asked a new question: what if the blood came instead from donated umbilical cords, which is naturally richer in the type of hemoglobin a baby is born with? In its first…

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia, usually shortened to BPD, is a chronic lung condition that affects many of the most premature babies and can mean weeks or months of extra breathing support. A large United States study called the Budesonide in Babies (BiB) trial tested a hopeful idea: adding a steroid…

Syphilis is a treatable infection that can pass from a pregnant person to their baby during pregnancy. Cases in the United States are rising again, and two new American studies suggest the true number of affected babies is higher than official counts show — some infections are found too late in…

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…

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…

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…

Babies born just a few weeks early — between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy, a group doctors call "late preterm" — usually look healthy and full-sized, but their lungs can still be immature enough to cause breathing trouble in the first hours of life. A 2025 study from a women's hospital in Ankara…

If you developed diabetes during pregnancy, or lived with diabetes before you became pregnant, you may have worried about what it means for your child's future — including their ability to focus, sit still, and do well at school. That worry is common and completely understandable, and for years the…

Premature babies who spend weeks in intensive care can develop a serious infection caused by a yeast called Candida, and doctors have long debated which antifungal medicine treats it best. A 2025 study from a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, compared two options in 56 premature babies and found that a…

Some babies have a difficult birth that briefly deprives the brain of oxygen, leaving them with mild signs of brain stress in the first hours of life. For babies with severe versions of this problem, doctors lower the baby's body temperature for three days — a treatment called cooling — and it…