Understanding the Needs of a Premature Baby

Without a doubt, for the parents this has facilitated them to understand the when, how and why of the attention that the baby receives, while for the medical personnel it has been an important source of motivation. At the same time, the parents receive more emotional support that helps them in these difficult moments, and they gradually acquire a personalized formation and adapted to the peculiar characteristics of their baby that will allow the baby to go to their house earlier and before what was habitual in the past, when the parents didn't participate in the attention of their baby.

This is the reassuring vision that we want to transmit to those who are in these circumstances. Still today statistics demonstrate that premature childbirths have not decreased, in spite of all the advances and controls that have made. The surprising difficulty to diminish the number of prematures is directly related, without a doubt, with the high number of multiple childbirths fruit of the modern methods of artificial fecundation, as well as with the possibility of risk pregnancies with important pathologies or due to an advanced age that was previously not viable and that at the moment are authorized although they often end up resulting in premature births. There are also a high percentage of cases in that the cause of the prematurity is not known or potentially treatable. Whatever the case, it is important that the parents know what procedures their child is going to face, fulfilling this way one of the actually established principle medical ethics.

The changes promoted in the neonatal intensive care units allow the doctors to treat premature children with optimism and allow wide possibilities of survival and integrity, both physically and mentally. In the intensive care units the doctors try to give the parents emotional support, truthful information, education in how parents should take care of their baby, participation in the important decisions made and encourage intimate contact with the baby. This situation is often times very difficult, but from the moment the baby enters the neonatal unit he or she becomes part of a great family whose objective is to save his or her life and to make sure it lasts a long time and that it fecundates in all that concerns the baby’s physical, psychic and emotional development.