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Preemie babies need smaller quantities of milk, special feeding devices and ongoing support until their suckling reflex is mature enough to be bottle or breast fed.
Finally, at 36 weeks a baby’s suckling reflex is fully developed. Before this, a baby lacks the ability to nurse or drink from a bottle and is generally fed through feeding tubes – delivering expressed breast milk or formula directly into the baby’s stomach.
The ability for a premature baby to nurse or drink from a bottle requires patience, practice, and a great support team. Once the baby’s sucking reflex is developed, the hard work begins. Meeting the needs for a preemie baby – especially as a breastfeeding mother is a delicate dance dance that caregivers and their support team need to get right.
The practice starts in the NICU to prepare families for the much-anticipated homecoming. Having the right feeding essentials to support a preemie baby’s development can make a world of difference not only to the baby’s wellbeing and ability to thrive but also the mental state of you as a mother.
Remember, whether you’re able to breastfeed or have to bottle feed your premature baby, fed is always best. We hope our selection of products makes your journey as easy and memorable as possible.
Within the first 24 hours of life, your newborn will only need ±1tsp of colostrum every feed.
From these tiny but mighty quantities, your infant will eventually need anywhere between 450-1,355ml total intake each day depending on whether they are formula, breast or combination fed. The amount your infant requires will be determined by their body weight and your paediatrician will recommend a steady weight gain of 150-200g each week.
During this phase, smaller bottles, slow-flow teats and smaller soothers are generally required. Larger soothers can – for example, cause your infant to gag and bring up their feed.
This pre-solids phase is made up of an exclusive liquid diet – with your infant feeding every 2-3 hours and stretching the nighttime feed a little longer as solids start approaching.
Parents on leave during this period start to gear up to return to work at the end of this phase and important developments such as introducing a bottle (if exclusively breastfed), storing breastmilk and experimenting with different teats is in the near future.
The needs of an infant at this age are quite simple but it always helps to have the correct tools for the job and a variety of choice!
Baby-led, puree or combination-fed babies have similar feeding requirements but are vastly different to those of babies in their pre-solids phase.
The solids phase is one of the most exciting, testing, messy and rewarding phases to go through and there are many wonderful tools, accessories and feeding utensils to discover!
Some babies effortlessly accept solids while others may require a little more convincing with different kinds of feeding apparatuses. For example, you might find that your dreams of baby-led weaning are crushed when your hungry monster just won’t pick up a broccoli stem – in this case, a fresh food feeder is an awesome tool to get them used to the idea of feeding themselves or you might have to opt for purees for a little while – and that’s okay! Fed is best and we’ll provide you with as many tools as possible to get the job done.
proudly providing baby feeding solutions for parents across the spectrum.
The advice on this site has been approved by Nicoletta Hay of Kids Med.
proudly providing baby feeding solutions for parents across the spectrum.
The advice on this site has been approved by Nicoletta Hay of Kids Med.
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