Nevertheless, giving birth early can feel overwhelming.
Will your preemie baby be okay?
How long will he stay in theneonatal intensive care unit (NICU)?
Whats the long-term outlook?
The general categories include:
Premature babiesarent only categorized by gestational age.
What happens in the NICU?
Because their respiratory systems arent fully developed, these tiny babies need help breathing.
Most receive nutrition and fluids intravenously (through an IV) or feeding tube.
Because of their extremelylow birth weight, theyll need to gain a few pounds.
All of these can increase the amount of time a baby needs to stay in the hospital.
How long before your baby can go home?
Extreme preemies without complications are typically ready for discharge two to three weeks before their due date.
But new parents shouldnt get their hopes dashed when baby has to stay a little longer.
Soon enough, your little bundle will be ready to go home.
Babies born after week 30 tend to have little to no long-term health or developmental problems.
Most babies born before 32 weeks, however, tend to have breathing difficulties.
Babies who have breathing difficulties will likely need to use a respirator (ventilator) for a while.
This is called gavage feeding.
Some may require gavage feeding, but most will be able to nipple-feed.
If all checks out with your baby, he may be able to go home right away.
But a few years ago, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) changed the definition.
Now a full-term pregnancy is considered to be between39 weeks of pregnancythrough 40 weeks, 6 days.
At this point, babies are usually right on track developmentally, so any treatment will be minimal.
Many babies in this category don’t have to spend any time at all in the NICU.
At most, it will likely be a couple of weeks tops.
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