Customer Reviews

Caring for Your Premature Baby

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book offers a comprehensive guide for the complexities facing parents' of premature infants. It is a marvelously optimistic and understanding presentation of the challenges and opportunities for surmounting them written for families' experiencing the birth and care of premature infants. Active participation of parents' in the often unfamiliar setting of the intensive care nursery is guided and encouraged by the authors, one of whom has specialized in the care of premature infants for more than 25 years. Strategies for coping with this emotional and complex life event are discussed with a rare combination of empathy and medically accurate detail. Ways in which parents and families can be advocates for their infants both in the nursery and later at home are presented by mothers and fathers, in their own words, who have cared for their own premature babies. Sources of support for parents are recounted by the authors and within these parents' stories. I highly recommend this book to families seeking reassurance and accessible knowledge about the changes and adjustments accompanying premature birth.

While this book was at times difficult to read, it was very informative and helped fill in the gaps between our daily talks with the NICU pediatricians. It's suited for both the parents of preemies (34 weeks or less) or pre-term babies (34-36 weeks); there is a chapter dedicated to the latter, and much of the material is applicable to both. Hopefully you'll never have a need for this book, but if you do it's a good one.

If nothing else, the dedication by the authors should be a major clue that this isn't the cookie cutter process exploiting a sensitive subject. Clear, crisp and accessable.

As a mom on bedrest for preterm labor, this book helped me to be more emotionally prepared and more medically informed for what lies ahead. That knowledge has to be beneficial to the baby! I appreciated the frankness of the possibilities, and "the odds" that this or that complication may occur. I'm sure that it would also be very helpful for parents without prior knowledge of a preterm delivery, as that is more of the point of view in which the book is written.

As the mom of 29 week twins, this book filled in the gaps when the NICU staff didn't have the time (or if I wasn't ready to hear all the details). It allowed us the time to read the details and think of our questions before approaching our nurses. We knew in advance that our twins would be early and we skimmed the book to get a handle of what might be to come. It was frightening but prepared us for what we were to experience and it was realistic (difficult to read in some sections but true to life). This is not a book for those expecting a pre-term infant (or I advise you only to read the chapters aiming at this gestational age). It is aimed at those with quite premature babies. Our boys ran the gamut of what was described here - some were only scares (thankfully) but others crashed into our lives including a diagnoses at 6 mths of age of cerebral palsy. This is the realities of prematurity and you need to be prepared that this might happen to your child when making decisions for them.

This is a well written reference for parents and for new nicu nurses and any NICU caretaker.

We, My Wife and I just want to thanks the Writers of this book for helping us to stay relax during our 2 and half months that our baby MONICA was on the NICU. We were very tired when we get home every night and then reading the things that happens to our baby those days. The book was very helpful to us even with the bad real facts like the dead of some baby's. We never thought that something like this situation can happen to us, and I remember that one day we were at the hospital and reading a magazine, in a little spot of a page I found a review of this book, I showed to my wife and the next thing we did after living the hospital was to order this book. Again we wish the writers a BIG THANKS for everything on this book. My Wife AMALIA, our precious baby MONICA and I.

Having a premature baby can be very difficult for Moms and Dads. This book adds to new parents' fears by describing terrible things that can happen to your child--but in reality, probably won't. Who needs that? There is no comfort to be found in the book, or any advice that I found useful. Look to your doctors and nurses for thorough, up to date information on your baby's prognosis, and for good advice on how to best take care of your baby. Do not try to find answers in this book.

I bought this book and was very excited when it arrived. When I started to read the book I became very disapointed. I felt that the book skimmed over the subjects. I thought I got a better explaination from the NICU unit then this book. I frowned at that the book only talked about breastfeeding moms and nothing about formula feeding moms. Overall the best way to describe my thoughts about this book is very disapointed. I hope this will help those moms out there that had a premie born before 34 to 36 weeks.