How you can help your premature baby

Surrounded by technology and highly efficient medical carers, you may feel helpless and inadequate, but there is a great deal that you and your partner can do to help your baby.

The neonatal staff will encourage you to become involved with your baby’s care right from the start. Even if your baby is born prematurely, you should be able to breastfeed eventually. As soon as your baby is ready, he will be introduced to milk as a food. You will need to start by expressing your milk, perhaps by using a breast pump (these can be hired from the NCT). Many hospitals also have breastmilk banks.

If you have problems expressing your milk, ask for advice from a midwife, or a trained breastfeeding counsellor from the NCT or La Leche League. If possible, try to put your baby to the breast - even if he doesn’t feed; skin-to-skin contact will stimulate milk production and once breastfeeding is established, your supply should increase.

The neonatal staff will also encourage you to talk to your baby and to have skin contact with him. In some hospitals mothers and fathers are encouraged to carry their naked baby inside their clothes, against their chest. This is called kangaroo care and has been shown to benefit the baby’s development. However, you will need to follow strict guidelines if you decide to do this.

Many parents find that when they see the neonatalogist, they forget the questions they wanted to ask. You may find it helps to write them down as you think of them, perhaps in a notebook. The same notebook might be useful to keep a diary of your baby’s progress and how you are feeling. It can be reassuring to be able to read it as your baby develops, and look back on what your baby has come through. And if, tragically, your baby does not survive, it can be a poignant and concrete memory of his life, however brief.

Eventually, despite the inevitable setbacks and disappointments, you should be able to start looking forward to your baby’s discharge. Today, babies go home when they are still quite tiny, providing they are developing normally.