Your premature baby learns about the world mainly through touch , and touch is a key way for you to bond with your premature baby. It can be soothing for your premature baby if you warm your hands and place them gently on her back or head.
Just keep them still. Too much pressure or the wrong kind of touch can be stressful for your baby. Protection In a full-term baby, the skin acts as a barrier against bacteria and viruses that can infect the body. The fat under the skin also insulates the baby by keeping in heat and fluid. It prevents dehydration too. Skin is a live organ that forms new layers and sheds old ones all the time.
It has sweat pores, glands, blood vessels and sensory nerves. If the layer of fat is not fully developed, there is an increased risk of high water loss through the skin. Water loss can lead to complications such as temperature instability, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, as well as heat and calorie loss.
By placing your baby in an incubator, their temperature can be more easily controlled. Hospital guidelines on humidification differ, but generally there is a weaning off humidity from 1 to 7 days, depending on the gestational age of the baby. If the layer of fat is not fully developed, there is also an increased risk of infection, i. As your baby puts on weight, the fat will fill out their skin; reducing the likelihood of heat loss, water loss, and infection. As your baby grows, their finger and toenails may progress from being just about visible to reaching the tips of their fingers and toes, with a normal appearance.
Some term babies have a low baseline heart rate which is more evident when they sleep. In addition, the pupils of their eyes cannot restrict in response to light, so although your baby will keep their eyes closed and spend most of their time in a sleep-like state initially, care must be taken to protect their eyes from light.
Therefore, controlling the physical environment around your baby is essential in helping your baby adapt to the world. The lights in the neonatal unit will be dimmed, their incubator will be covered, and direct bright light on your baby will be avoided. As your baby grows, they will develop the ability to adapt their pupils in response to light. This response to light will develop further with increasing gestational age. This may be visually evident in a breastfed baby as they attempt to nuzzle to the breast to take sucks.
The ability to coordinate sucking and swallowing may slightly vary from baby to baby. A premature baby is a baby born before the 37th week of gestational age. As a normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, premature babies, or preemies, have less time to develop in the womb. This makes them more likely to have health complications or birth defects. The US National Institute of Health acknowledges that children born preterm are at greater risk of ophthalmic conditions, including strabismus or retinopathy of prematurity ROP than children born at term.
The experts note that premature birth is responsible for 35 percent of vision impairment cases as the final stages of vision development occur in the last few weeks of pregnancy. Accordingly, the risk of ocular abnormalities becomes one of the greatest fears for parents, as well as the physicians who care for preterm infants. To prevent vision problems or its loss you should be aware of the risk and what you can do about it.
Retinopathy of prematurity ROP is an eye disease that can happen in premature babies. It causes abnormal blood vessels to grow in the retina, and can lead to blindness. Retinopathy ret-in-AH-puh-thee of prematurity makes blood vessels grow abnormally and randomly in the eye. These vessels tend to leak or bleed, leading to scarring of the retina, the layer of nerve tissue in the eye that lets us see.
When the scars shrink, they pull on the retina, detaching it from the back of the eye. Because the retina is a vital part of vision, its detachment will cause blindness. During pregnancy, blood vessels grow from the center of a developing baby's retina 16 weeks into the mother's pregnancy, and then branch outward and reach the edges of the retina between 8 months into the pregnancy and when the baby is full term.
In babies born early, normal retinal vessel growth may be disrupted and abnormal vessels can develop. This can cause leaking and bleeding into the eye. ROP has no signs or symptoms when it first develops in a newborn. The only way to detect it is through an eye exam by an ophthalmologist. Some cases of ROP are mild and correct themselves.
But others progress to scarring, pulling the retina away from the rest of the eye. These cases need surgery to prevent vision loss or blindness.
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