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 [...]

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Lily, Ruby, Maddie and their mum Lucinda
Where was Lily born?
Lily was born at the John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle. I was transferred there from North Gosford Private once they realized there were complications. We also spent a week in the Childrens Hospital at Westmead while she underwent cardiac surgery for a Patent Ductus Arteriosus.
What was her [...]

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 [...]