If a few decades ago it was thought that carrying out a premature baby was a matter of incubator and fattening, today that concept has varied greatly, due among other things to the mother-kangaroo method and other discoveries. Thanks to all this, taking care of premature babies today is a much more "human" issue.
More and more premature children are born and survive, coming from multiple gestations or not. Around nine out of every 100 children are born prematurely, which means that in Spain more than 30,000 children are born early each year.
Today, almost everyone who weighs more than 1,000 grams at birth survives, although that great achievement for which a fragile human life goes ahead needs a lot of support and help that is not always easy.
The physical needs of the premature baby are no less important than their emotional needs, since they are delicate little people who need affection and human contact.
I loved a clarifying article and it was full of sensitivity in which Dr. Juan Casado, head of Pediatrics at the Niño Jesús Hospital in Madrid, analyzes the needs of premature babies, emphasizing that taking care of them is an "art", and that you have to attend to all your senses.
He notes that premature children are very sensitive to noise and light, and therefore the environment at birth must be as respectful as possible. For example, incubators should be covered with cloths for much of the day, to prevent natural or artificial light from preventing them from resting.
It also emphasizes the benefits of soft music for premature babies, especially classical music, for example that of Mozart, which generates comfort and as we saw brings benefits for the baby: lower heart rate, lower metabolic activity and, consequently, greater weight gain
Smell and touch are also important in premature newborns, who smell breast milk or feel that their mother or father is touching, caressing or touching skin to skin thanks to the kangaroo method.
The little ones, even those weighing less than a kilo, feel pain, so they cannot be punctured, disturbed or put in uncomfortable postures, because they have no autonomy to move, and they should try to calm the pain, for example by giving them to eat, a bottle, better with breast milk, while the painful procedure is practiced (the suction of food releases endogenous morphine).
Fortunately, this emotional and human aspect is increasingly taken into account in hospitals, which develop programs such as that of the Hospital October 12 in Madrid to humanize the treatment of premature babies.
I recommend reading the article by Juan Casado to approaching the world of premature baby care, to their physical and emotional needs, to their achievements, and to understand a little better what can be done to make these babies get ahead.
