Worried About Preterm Babies' Development? All You Need To Know From A Neonatologist

NICU is an extension of the uterine womb-A Feel inside the mother.

World Prematurity Day 2022: Typically, pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks. However, according to WHO, about 15 million babies are born prematurely yearly. Across 184 countries annually, 2010 data shows that 3.5 million babies are born prematurely.

How Can Preemie Parents Cope with the Stress?

To stabilize your baby's health, she will be moved to the special-care nursery, which may be wrenching for you. In addition, you can participate in feeding your baby by expressing breast milk and administering it to the baby through a paladar or katori spoon. Mother's milk is the best possible support you can give to your baby, which enhances her immune response and helps her resist infection and help the premature gut facilitate digestion.

Common Preemie Parent Emotions

The NICU is complex, with many equipment, unique noises, alarms, and emotions. You might initially feel anxious and frightened and feel something is wrong with your baby. NICU is a miniature uterine womb designed to help your baby nurture and outgrow prematurity. Dr Ramkumar, Consultant Paediatrician and Neonatologist, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, Chennai, shares how NICU support premature babies and their development.

1. Distress: Distress is a normal reaction to a new environment, and most parents are initially uncomfortable. Some mothers feel their relatives judge them as responsible for the baby's problems. The fact is it's no one fault, and many NICU admissions are unanticipated. Parental anxiety usually decreases over time. We only need to absorb that NICU is an extension of the uterine womb, a warm place for your baby to outgrow prematurity.
2. Annoyance: You might feel annoyed at the hospital staff or NICU staff(They don't know what they are doing!), or you might feel irritated about your partner (How can he resume work, leaving baby and me here for long days) or you might be annoyed about yourself(I should have carried her for few more weeks), and they express it in different ways. Discussing your feelings with NICU staff is the best way to outgrow this emotion.
3. Guilt: Most parents feel guilty about preterm delivery. Mothers especially have so many dreams right from becoming pregnant and expecting the best outcome, and all of a sudden, when things stumble, it's natural to feel guilty, and the answer is that it's nobody's fault. The scientific explanation for this emotion is that for most premature deliveries, the reason is idiopathic(unknown), and the NICU team can often provide answers and comfort.
4. Feeling visible: Unlike other wards, NICU is a shared space where your baby will be amidst many other premature babies, and there is always room for comparisons. Your name may be displayed on the entry board, and you might initially feel like a fish out of the tank. Even the new doctors who join to get trained in NICU have the same feeling, and it is no bad thing about it. The more you spend time with the environment and your baby, the more familiar you become. Your presence heals your baby sooner.

Developmental Supportive Care

• The ultimate solution to all the above emotions that bring you down is Developmentally supportive care, which begins right from when you deliver your baby and continues even after discharge. Apart from the routine intensive care treatment, starting the developmental process right from NICU along with preterm care has improved the outcomes of the vulnerable population. Apart from supporting the baby, this multi-disciplinary-based care philosophy, called developmentally supportive care, also helps parents cope with anxiety and stress due to premature delivery.
• As a result, integrated parents in caregiving the baby right from NICU, which continues even after discharge to ensure the best possible developmental outcomes. Generally, developmentally supportive care has various components such as kangaroo mother care, kangaroo father care (skin-to-skin contact), handling techniques of premature babies, positioning of the premature baby, swaddling them, learning the process of feeding methods(paladai, spoon feeds, tube feeds), pain management and gaining knowledge of infant development.
• Family-centred developmentally supportive interventions that reduce stress and provide pain treatment, support the infant's self-regulation and promote parental presence as well as bonding and attachment to decrease the strain on the parents, improve brain development, and positively affect the cognitive and psychomotor development of the infant.
• From an economic perspective, it is essential that by providing a comprehensive developmental care program or facilities for parents to live in the nursery, the length of NICU stay is reported to be reduced.

Babies don't need your tears; they need your hugs, love and care.