Nursing of premature infants
Release time : 06/08/2025 09:30:01
The World Health Organization classifies neonates who are born before the 37th week of gestation and weigh less than 2500 grams as preterm infants.
Premature infants exhibit reddish-pink skin, shallow and irregular breathing, poor sucking reflexes, impaired thermoregulatory functions, and various involuntary reflexes, along with low levels of arousal.
In the feeding and nursing of preterm infants, special attention should be paid.
What should be noted in the care of preterm infants? How do they feed? Preterm infants are a special group among newborns, with their organ functions and adaptability being weaker than that of other babies. Their birth deserves particular attention and care. Beyond providing more love and patience, new mothers should also pay special attention to the care of preterm infants to ensure they catch up with full-term infants.
1. Temperature: Preterm infants have delicate skin and fragile bodies. When a preterm infant can suckle milk and ensure that they receive the required amount of intake each day.
In indoor temperature of 21-24℃, it can keep normal body temperature.
The weight increases daily by 10-30g and reaches more than 2300g.
There were no complications.
You can be discharged without oxygen and without symptoms of anemia and other nutritional deficiencies.
2. Pay attention to keeping warm: Pay attention to thermal insulation for premature infants, but thermal insulation does not mean keeping the child strictly covered. In home care, the indoor temperature should be kept at 24-28 ° C, and the indoor relative humidity should be 55%-65%. If the indoor temperature cannot be reached, consider using a warm water bag to keep the child warm, but pay attention to safety.
The infant's body temperature should be maintained at 36-37℃, and the body temperature should be measured once in the morning and afternoon. If the maximum body temperature or the minimum body temperature differ by 1℃, corresponding measures should be taken to ensure the stability of the body temperature.
3. Bathing: When the baby's weight is less than 2.5 kg, do not take a bath. Use edible oil to wipe the baby's neck, armpits, thigh roots and other folds every 2-3 days.
If you weigh more than 3 kilograms and milk up to 100 ml each time, you can take a bath like a healthy newborn.
But in the cold season, pay attention to the indoor temperature and water temperature when taking a bath.
4. Skin should be cleaned frequently: Many parents have misunderstandings. They think that premature babies are weak and afraid of catching a cold, so they reduce the number of baths they take. In fact, premature babies have thin skin and are more susceptible to bacterial infections. Cleaning is even more important.
The temperature in Guangdong is high, and even in winter, you can turn on the heating to ensure the room temperature. There is no need to worry about children feeling cold.
During the cleaning process, attention should be paid to the wrinkled parts. After changing a diaper each time, it is necessary to clean and dry it with clean water.
Tooth cleaning should be done with cold water to prevent oral infections.
5. Careful feeding: Premature infants need breastfeeding more.
Because the milk of premature mothers contains more nutrients and amino acids than the breast milk of full-term infants, it can fully meet the nutritional needs of premature infants; moreover, the milk of premature mothers is more conducive to the digestion and absorption of premature infants, and can also improve the immunity of premature infants. Ability and have a great effect in fighting infection.
Therefore, mothers must have confidence that their own milk is the best suitable for feeding their children. They must find a way to get their children to eat breast milk, or find a way to get their children to eat breast milk after being discharged from the hospital.
6. Carry out more touching and verbal communication to give the child some love transmission: Premature infants can start touching therapy after their condition is stable. After a certain period of massage, the baby's milk intake can be significantly increased, head circumference, length, blood channel protein and weight are significantly increased.
Touching can bring many benefits to the growth of premature infants and can be used as one of the comprehensive intervention measures during premature infants.
Kneading is a passive form of exercise, where the skin contact stimulates the development of tactile and motor nerves, facilitating brain growth.
7. Prevent Infection: Apart from the person specifically caring for the child (the mother or grandma), it is best not to let anyone else enter the room of a premature baby, and even less so to show the baby to relatives or neighbors who are not family members.
Persons who have charge of children should change into clean, fresh clothes (or disposable sterile wrappers) when feeding or doing other things to the child.
When the mother has a cold, she should wear a mask to breastfeed; before feeding, she should wash her hands with soap and hot water to avoid cross-infection.
What is a preterm infant? A preterm infant is a baby who is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy.
Most of them have weights below 2500g and head circumferences are less than 33cm.
Preterm infants have weaker organ functions and adaptive capacities than other babies, so special care is required for them.
Premature babies must first receive special care in the premature infant room, which must maintain constant temperature, humidity, and fresh air.
In addition, premature babies are best breastfed.
Symptoms of premature babies. Premature babies have their own unique symptoms. So, what are the symptoms of premature babies? The details are as follows: 1. Appearance: The more premature a premature infant is, the thinner and more tender the skin, the more water content in the tissue, with recessed impressions, red color, less subcutaneous fat, less muscle, and shorter and soft nails. At the same time, the longer the fetal hair on the trunk, the less and shorter the hair on the head, the larger the head, the wider the fontanelle, the flat and soft ears are attached to the skull, the soft chest, the areola is point-like, the edges are not protruding, and the breast is small or cannot be touched.
The abdomen is swollen and the scrotum is poorly developed.
The testes of premature male infants often lie in the outer groin and gradually drop into the scrotum during development.
In women, the more premature the birth is, the more separated and prominent the labia minora is.
There are few wrinkles on the soles of the hands and feet.
2. Thermoregulation: Difficult and unstable, limited by its role in heat production, with fewer muscles and low tension, unable to change posture to reduce the area of heat loss.
On the other hand, due to immature sweat gland development and incomplete sweating function, it is also prone to high body temperature.
3. Vulnerable to Infections: The body's resistance to various infections is extremely weak, and even minor infections can lead to serious consequences like sepsis.
4. Breathing of preterm infants: rapid and shallow, often with irregular interruptions or pauses in breathing.
The crying is very faint, and common cyanosis is observed.
5. Premature Infants' Breastfeeding and Swallowing Ability: Both are weak, with the pyloric sphincter being relaxed, which can easily lead to aspiration pneumonia, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal distension.
6. Bleeding: When trauma, hypoxia, infection or coagulopathy occurs, bleeding is often severe and protracted.
Brain vessels are especially prone to injury and bleeding.
Sometimes, unexplained pulmonary hemorrhage may also occur.
7. Jaundice: Premature infants have poorer physiologic jaundice clearance and excretion of bilirubin, resulting in longer duration and more severe jaundice than full term infants.
8. Hemostasis Mechanism: Due to the immaturity of the liver in preterm infants, resulting in incomplete liver function, the levels of prothrombin Factor V, Factor VII, and Factor X are lower than those in full-term infants, leading to a compromised hemostasis mechanism and a tendency to bleed easily.
9. Nutrition: Decreased storage of iron and vitamins A, D, prone to deficiency diseases of this kind.
Glucose function: The ability to convert liver glycogen into glucose is diminished, making it easier for blood sugar levels to drop during fasting and leading to hypoglycemia and shock.
The function of synthetic proteins is poor, and edema can be formed due to low plasma protein levels.
Due to immaturity of the glomerular and tubular systems, filtration rates are low, with less efficient clearance of urea, chloride, potassium, and phosphorus, and proteinuria is more common.
In premature infants, there is a rapid decline in weight and they are more prone to infection, vomiting, diarrhea, and changes in environmental temperature that can lead to acid-base imbalance.
12. Other: Central immaturity, weak cry, limited movements, hypotonia, and absent neurologic reflexes including coughing, sucking, and swallowing reflexes.
13. Premature infants have a greater growth ratio than term infants. At 1 year of age, the weight of a full-term infant is roughly three times that at birth, while a premature infant weighing between 1501 to 2000g at 1 year has a weight five and a half times that at birth, and one between 1001 to 1500g weighs seven times at 1 year.
14. Cellular Immunity and Antibodies: Preterm infants have less IgG from the placenta, insufficient synthesis of their own cellular immunity and antibodies IgA, D, E, G, M, low complement levels, serum lacking adjuvants, thus they are more susceptible to infections and easily develop sepsis.
Feeding for preterm infants is just as important for new mothers. In addition to caring for premature infants, parents should seek advice from experienced doctors to choose an appropriate feeding method for their babies.
1. Breast milk: For preterm infants weighing over 2000 grams without any risk factors of malnutrition, breast milk remains the first choice after discharge.
You should pay attention to the mother's diet and nutrition balance.
2. Breast Milk + Breastmilk Enhancement Formula: For extremely low birth weight infants and those whose nutritional status was not satisfactory before discharge, breastfeeding should continue until the 40th week of gestation.
Subsequently, the calorie density of the breast milk should be slightly lower than during hospitalization (73 kcal/100 ml), based on growth status.
Since breastfeeding is particularly important for premature babies, mothers must insist on squeezing the milk every day and sending it to the hospital while the baby is in hospital.
If you don't finish the breast milk, you can freeze it and it will be fine for 6 months.
This way, your breast milk will increase, and when the baby is discharged from the hospital, he can continue to receive it.
3. Premature formula milk: Infants who are exclusively breastfed and extremely or very low birth weight (with a gestational age of 40 weeks) need to be fed until the 40th week of pregnancy. If breastfeeding does not meet the weight gain requirements, mixed feeding may be used (the premature formula milk should not exceed one-half of the total daily intake), as a supplement to breast milk.
4. After the premature infant is discharged from the hospital, formula milk is suitable for artificial feeding of preterm infants or as a supplement to breast milk.
5. Infant Formula Milk: Suitable for infants weighing more than 2000 grams, with no risk factors for malnutrition, and who have shown satisfactory weight gain after discharge. It can be used as a supplement to breastfeeding in cases of premature birth or as a substitute for breast milk when there is insufficient breast milk available.
Compared with full-term infants, many parents are worried that premature infants will not be able to keep up with their intelligence.
At this time, parents are advised to closely observe the baby's movements and intellectual development from the time of birth, and to correct mistakes and remedies in time when problems arise.
You can also use various kitchen tools, blocks, and mirrors to stimulate the baby's intelligence in play. Here are some specific ways to do it: 1. Early Intervention: Encourage your baby to interact with toys and objects that stimulate their senses, including different colors, shapes, and sounds.
The specific practices are similar to those in early childhood education.
Nutritional Catch-up: Breastfeeding as much as possible. Studies have shown that infants who are breastfed tend to have higher IQs by the age of 7 or 8 than those who are not.
Researchers report that breastfeeding for longer periods of time has a larger impact on intelligence.
Children who were breastfed for 8 months or more had an average IQ score of 6 points higher in the language area than those who had not been breastfed.
The harm of preterm infants 1. The cardiac and pulmonary function of preterm infants is poor, which may cause respiratory distress and even death.
2. Premature infants can develop edema and pulmonary hemorrhage.
3. In preterm infants, if the lungs are not mature at birth, the lungs of the premature infant cannot expand properly after birth, leading to difficulty breathing and, in severe cases, death. Additionally, premature infants have immature livers and underdeveloped enzyme systems, lacking vitamin K, which greatly increases the risk of bleeding.
In preterm infants, the development of the body's temperature regulatory center is incomplete, there are fewer subcutaneous fat deposits, the body surface area is relatively large, and its temperature fluctuates with changes in external conditions. Generally, it remains lower than normal. Without proper warmth care, ictus may occur.
5. Premature infants are prone to jaundice and sometimes the condition can be severe.
Their sucking force is weak, feeding is difficult, and hypoglycemia may occur. Some premature infants even require nasogastric feeding.
Additionally, preterm infants have a weaker immune system and are prone to infections such as pneumonia.
The medical information provided in this text is for reference only.
If you feel unwell, it is recommended to seek medical attention immediately, and the medical diagnosis and treatment will be subject to offline diagnosis.