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 [...]

THE state’s most fragile newborns are being sent interstate because Victoria’s neonatal intensive care units are stretched to breaking point.
Over the past week, Victoria’s 72 neonatal intensive care cots have been full, forcing dangerously premature babies or mothers with high-risk pregnancies to be flown interstate for life-preserving care.
Four acute babies or mothers with high-risk pregnancies [...]

MILICA shouldn’t be here yet. This five-week-old baby, born three months’ premature, should still be a kick in her mother’s belly and a half-decided name. Now her home is a plastic tub, a mess of monitor wires and a tube pressing air into her lungs.
Next Saturday she’ll have her second unexpected change of address, as [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

On first listen, a pacifier that plays music to your baby sounds like just another product to put in the “useless baby stuff” file along with the Diaper Genie, the Wipe Warmer, hard–soled shoes, and infant hairbrushes. But for some babies, the Pacifier-Activated-Lullaby or PAL apparently has real value.
Some babies, especially those born prematurely, have [...]