It’s very distressing to have a baby born sick or prematurely and who needs special care in an incubator. This is so different from every parent’s dream of having a healthy baby with no medical problems. You may wonder, ‘why has this happened to us? Did I do something wrong?’ You may feel there’s nothing you can do when your baby is surrounded by tubes and technology and nurses. You may feel afraid to love your baby in case you lose hom or her.
In fact, premature and sick babies need their parents’ love and care every bit as much as other babies. The good news is that there are important things you can do to give your baby the best chance of growing strong and well. You can:
- give your baby lots of time snuggled against your bare skin
- give your baby breastmilk to drink, even if your baby is not big enough to breastfeed directly
Both drinking breastmilk and having lots of skin-to-skin contact make a real difference to how well a premature baby does.
To find out how you can be at the heart of your baby’s care, you can watch these film clips from the Small Wonders DVD. These clips are just a taster, the DVD is scheduld to be available in spring 2012.