Babies born very early usually receive fat through a drip because their bodies need energy before they can feed fully by mouth. Doctors have wondered whether a higher dose of this fat might let more of the yellow jaundice pigment reach the brain. A study of 134 very premature babies in Houston…

Some babies have seizures in their first days of life, often after a birth in which their brain was short of oxygen. Two studies published in 2026 looked at which of these babies go on to have epilepsy, meaning seizures that keep coming back later in childhood. Most babies did not develop epilepsy…

Many parents who had COVID-19 while pregnant have wondered whether it could affect their child's development. Three large studies that followed children to about age three or four found mostly reassuring results: two found no overall increase in developmental diagnoses, while one smaller study…

Many people take a common type of antidepressant (an SSRI) in pregnancy, and three 2026 studies looked at how their babies do after birth. Exposed babies were a little more likely to need help adjusting to breathing and life outside the womb, especially after late-pregnancy use, but serious…

Babies born early often have a brain scan called MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) in hospital, but doctors disagree about whether a scan a few weeks after birth or one near the original due date better predicts how a child will develop. A 2026 review of 30 studies (2,107 babies) favoured the…

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…

Many very premature babies with long-term lung disease are given sildenafil, a medicine that relaxes the blood vessels in the lungs, even though it had not been tested in a large, carefully controlled trial in these babies. A careful study in 30 American hospitals has now found that, given by mouth…

Many babies born very early pause their breathing for a few seconds because the brain's breathing controls are not yet mature, and almost all of them are given caffeine to help. A large European survey shows that hospitals agree closely on caffeine but differ on what comes next, and a second paper…

Two recent studies suggest that doctors may be able to tell by about three months of age which babies who had a difficult start are at high risk of cerebral palsy, even where brain scans are not available. One study tested which assessments work best, and the other showed that a busy hospital…

Some hospitals offer every pregnant woman an ultrasound that measures the length of the cervix, the "neck" of the womb, and give a hormone called progesterone to those whose cervix is short, in the hope of preventing premature birth. A 2026 review of the research found that we still do not know for…

For families of babies born early, starting solid foods can feel like one more decision with no clear answer. Two recent studies suggest that starting solids between about three and four months after the due date made no measurable difference to weight at age two, and that how parents feed changes…

Three new studies from China, England, and Pakistan show how the newborn heel-prick test for an underactive thyroid helps most babies, yet can miss a rarer form of the condition and sometimes never reaches the families who need it. In the studies, babies who started thyroid medicine early did well…