Introduction to Premature Babies

Probably from the moment you knew you were going to become a parent there were a lot of things you started to think about that had to get done and planned. The pregnancy, the birth, and everything that comes later on…up to the last detail! You probably thought about everything except that your child would come into the world before completing the thirty-seven weeks of gestation.

As a matter a fact, when a baby is born prematurely, everything happens very quickly, including the job you have in being a parent. In just a few hours you realize that the baby you had thought about so much is already there with you. You know the color of your baby’s hair, what his or her hands look like, the feet, and you may already know your baby’s eye color but it hurts you terribly to have to be separate from him or her.

On one hand you understand that the baby needs to be in the incubator for a while to grow, accumulate defenses and achieve sustained growth, but on the other hand you are afraid of his or her uncertain evolution.

And this is all due to that when the baby comes into the world before time, he or she needs to be in an intensive care unit, however it’s normal for all mothers and fathers to have feelings of uncertainty, confusion, fear and worry.

As mothers, due to the anguish of the separation, natural in every childbirth, often times a sad and remote sensation comes along as well that the baby has abandoned her before time, and she might let herself fall into the feeling that she is probably not capable of nurturing or taking care of her baby. It makes a mother feel bothered when their child is not with them, and sooner or later, the mother ends up blaming herself.

The father - who has probably been some what left out of the whole pregnancy thing – all pregnant women are more aware of what goes on inside them than what goes on outside of them-, must now face the fact that he has a defenseless child, and it is possible that he will not know how to behave and feel that he has lost his place and space. His place as a partner, since the father will be able to notice that the mother is much more involved in what happens with the baby rather than on him, since as a father he has not yet discovered how to connect with someone that he cannot establish any form of interaction with.

It is not easy to have a premature baby, any way you want to look at it. However, it can turn into a positive experience if you do everything you can to show your capacity to love. And yes, it is true that the response that you will get from your child during this stage will be minimum. You need to remember that the baby’s only job at this time is to put all of his or her physical, psychic and emotional mechanisms to work. Simply because you accept that the wait that you had begun during the pregnancy is now being prolonged, although in a different way, the baby is actually preparing himself to be born for the second time.