Premmie Baby Health Issues | L'il Aussie Prems Blog

Pre-Eclampsia Awareness Week

August 30, 2008 By Finisterre Leave a Comment

I just discovered that this week is Pre-Eclampsia Awareness Week.

I had never even heard of pre-eclampsia until a friend of mine told me it was the reason she needed to have her baby delivered 8 weeks early, four years ago. To be honest, at that time I didn’t have any idea what she had been through. Since my daughter was born I’ve met a lot more women – mostly via L’il Aussie Prems – who suffered from this very serious and sometimes life-threatening medical condition and whose babies were born prematurely as a result. In fact even two friends in my new mothers’ group who were able to have full term babies also suffered from pre-eclampsia in the late stages of their pregnancy. It’s a lot more common than I had previously imagined.

The Australian Action on Pre-Eclampsia (AAPEC) has a website at http://www.aapec.org.au with a good FAQ and stories from people who’ve been through it personally.

Filed Under: Premmie Baby Health Issues Tagged With: HELLP syndrome, newborn babies, pre-eclampsia, Premature Babies, premature baby, premature birth, premmie baby, premmie support network, preterm birth

Luke Shah’s a hero as scientists understand the premature brain

June 22, 2008 By Julia Toivonen 1 Comment

LUKE Shah is only five, but he’s set to help thousands of premature babies.

Born almost three months early, Luke is one of 138 Victorian children whose brains were scanned as newborns as part of a world-first study.

Six years into the project, researchers from Melbourne’s Howard Florey Institute are now sending their subjects, including Luke, back to the scanner.

The long-term aim is to match brain abnormalities in premature babies with the problems they typically face later in life – and then prevent them.

Scientist Deanne Thompson, who presented the study at last week’s international Human Brain Mapping conference in Melbourne, said the key was in monitoring the “white matter” that links the two sides of the brain.

“Premature infants have a reduced connection between the two hemispheres and often have difficulties with thinking, reasoning, problem solving and language,” she said.

“So if we can identify that a baby is likely to have certain learning difficulties, for example (by looking at their brain scan), treatments such as speech therapy can be targeted to them early.”

Editor – Evonne Barry, Health reporter

Article from Herald Sun

Filed Under: Media Articles, Premature Babies, Premmie Baby Health Issues

Premmie Baby Health

June 10, 2008 By Julia Toivonen Leave a Comment

When you have a premature baby, suddenly you find yourself in an unfamiliar hospital environment where staff talk about medical conditions you may never have heard of before. L’il Aussie Prems is pleased to bring you a series of short articles which aim to explain some of the conditions which affect premature babies. You might find these overviews useful when you want to tell your friends and family about issues faced by your premature baby.
Remember that each baby is different, and you should always consult a medical professional about circumstances which relate specifically to your child.

Newborn Jaundice

What is it?
Jaundice is a yellow discolouration of the skin and the whites of the eyes caused by hyperbilirubinemia (which means increased levels of bilirubin in the blood). Jaundice occurs in both full term and premature newborn babies, but is much more common in premature babies.

Why does it occur?
In the human body, new blood cells are being made all the time and old blood cells die. Soon after a baby is born, its body will start replacing foetal haemoglobin (the blood used by the developing foetus which enables oxygen to be transported via the umbilical tube) with adult haemoglobin (normal blood). One of the products of blood as it breaks down is called bilirubin. Bilirubin is normally filtered by the liver and then leaves the body via a bowel movement.

Premature babies tend to develop jaundice because their livers are too immature to remove the bilirubin from their blood, so it builds up and spreads to other tissues in the body. This is also known as physiologic jaundice. Bilirubin is a yellowish colour, which is why the baby’s skin takes on a yellowish tint.

Jaundice can also be made worse in a small number of babies by certain health problems such as having a different blood type from the mother.

Why is it a problem?
Jaundice is not usually a serious problem, although premature infants may be more sensitive to the ill effects of excess bilirubin. Extremely high levels can be toxic, as bilirubin may enter the brain, causing hearing problems and brain damage. However babies in hospital are carefully monitored and treated quickly before their bilirubin reaches dangerous levels.

How is it treated?
Doctors use a blood test to check the bilirubin level.
Moderate jaundice is treated by placing your baby naked or near-naked (with a protective mask over the eyes) under a special white or a bluish-coloured light. This is called phototherapy and can be delivered in many different ways safely, including via the use of special fibre-optic bili-blankets. The light breaks down the bilirubin in the skin into a substance that the body can excrete more easily. Usually phototherapy is needed for about a week, and after that, the liver is mature enough to excrete bilirubin on its own.

In cases of severe jaundice where phototherapy is not effective, a baby may need to have a special blood transfusion in which their blood is replaced (exchanged) with donor blood to wash the bilirubin out of their system.

Are there any long term problems from jaundice?
There are usually no long-term problems following jaundice in babies. Babies who have had high levels of jaundice should have their hearing checked at regular intervals. This is best discussed with your doctor or early childhood nurse. Brain damage due to very high levels of jaundice is now extremely rare because the levels are carefully monitored while babies are in hospital.

Filed Under: L'il Aussie Prems, NICU Life, Premmie Baby Health Issues

Premature girls get more from breast milk

June 3, 2008 By Julia Toivonen Leave a Comment

Premature baby girls appear to get greater benefit from breastfeeding compared than premature baby boys, according to new research.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the United States tracked a group of premature infants in Argentina to gauge the protective effect of breastfeeding against respiratory infections in babies.

The results of their research are published in this month’s edition of Pediatrics.

They found that infant girls who were breastfed were far less likely than baby boys who were breastfed to develop serious respiratory infections requiring hospitalisation.

Previous research has shown that breastfed babies receive a range of health benefits compared to those given baby formula.

These range from combating respiratory infections, fewer ear, stomach or intestinal infections, digestive problems, skin diseases and allergies.

“There are many, many different diseases that are protected against by breast-feeding. It’s a great source of nutrition,” Dr Fernando Polack of Johns Hopkins University says.

“In the specific case of acute respiratory diseases like bronchiolitis and viral infections of the respiratory tract, it seems that there is greater benefit in girls than in boys. And that benefit is substantial.”

Breathing easier

Bronchiolitis is an infection of the airways of the lungs seen most often in infants between about 3 and 6 months old.

The researchers studied a group of 119 high-risk infants who weighed under about 1.5 kilograms at delivery. This population is highly susceptible to these kinds of infections, Polack says.

Fifty per cent of the baby girls who were formula-fed had to be hospitalised when they experienced their first respiratory infection, compared to about 7 per cent of the girls who were breastfed, the researchers write.

There was no difference between the boys who were breastfed or formula-fed, with about 19 per cent of both groups needing hospitalisation when they got their first respiratory infection, the researchers said.

The pattern repeated throughout the first year of life and in subsequent infections, the researchers say.

Polack said there may be something in the breast milk that better activates a baby girl’s ability to cope with such infections more so than it does for a baby boy.

Article from ABC Science

Filed Under: Feeding (premature babies), Media Articles, Premmie Baby Health Issues

Premature Babies Need Cuddles

May 29, 2008 By Julia Toivonen Leave a Comment

Cuddling up against their mother’s bare skin can help babies born as early as 28 weeks recover more quickly from the painful medical procedures, a new research suggests.

According to the Canadian study, very premature babies benefit from skin to skin contact with their parents. Writing in the journal BMC Pediatrics, the McGill University team said it might aid the recovery process.

This study is the first to look at extremely premature babies, born between 28 and 31 weeks. It was previously thought by some experts that such young babies were not developed enough to benefit from human touch.

A common test used in neonatal units is the “heel prick” blood test, which produces a sample, which can be used to check blood sugar levels.

This is inevitably painfill for the baby, and in some cases, it can take minutes for this distress to recede which could be a problem for a baby whose health is in the balance.

In the study researchers carried out the test on some babies who were being actively cuddled, skin-to-skin, measuring facial expressions, heart rate and blood oxygen levels to assess the amount of pain suffered.

Pain scores after 90 seconds for the cuddled babies were much lower than for those who were not cuddled. Half the cuddled babies did not show any facial expression of pain when undergoing a heel prick test. Lead researcher Celeste Johnston said that the shorter recovery time could help maintain the baby’s health.

“The pain response in very preterm neonates appears to be reduced by skin-to-skin maternal contact,” BBC quoted her, as saying. Professor Linda Franck, from the Institute of Child Health in London, said that parents were often not encouraged to have skin-to-skin contact with their premature babies in UK neonatal units, despite growing evidence that it could help.

She said: “Neonatal units can be very intimidating places, and parents often do not know the best way to get involved. Parents want to do the right thing, but the message is difficult to get out there.”

“This study suggests that, even for the very youngest premature babies, skin to skin contact can reduce the stress response.”

Article from

Filed Under: Media Articles, Premmie Baby Health Issues

Premmie RSV Stories

March 30, 2008 By Julia Toivonen Leave a Comment

The National Premmie Foundation is holding National Premmie Day on Friday 25th July 2008. The theme will be an awareness week of RSV. The Foundation wants to put together a number of stories about prems, the risks of RSV and the effects it has on families. Would you be happy to let the Foundation use your child’s story?

What is needed in your recount is: birth details including the amount of time he/she spent in hospital following their early arrival, details of ongoing medical problems, the number of times he/she has been hosptalised for RSV/Bronchiolitis (including the length of each hospital stay), was your child tested for RSV on admission, were you given details of whether or not your child’s bronchiolitis was RSV positive, anything that the doctors might have said about your child being susceptible to the virus in the future, details of how your child’s hospitalisation has affected you and your family, whether you are or were aware of what can be done to prevent RSV (including any preventative drugs).

Please do not feel obliged to contribute, the decision is entirely yours. You can also provide photos of your child at birth, during any subsequent hospital admissions for RSV/bronchiolitis, and now. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

You can forward your story & photos to contact_us@prembaby.org.au