What to Do When Your Baby Is Premature: A Parent's Handbook for Coping with High-Risk Pregnancy and Caring for the Preterm Infant [Paperback]

Joseph A. Garcia-Prats (Author), Sharon Simmons Hornfischer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2000

"What's happening to me? Is my baby going to be okay?"

Maybe you're reading this guide because you've been told you're at high risk for having a premature baby. Or perhaps you're reading it after your baby's unexpectedly early birth, and you're wondering what the future holds for this incredibly tiny person. You'll find all the answers you need in this comprehensive guide for parents, the first book to fully discuss both coping with high-risk pregnancy and caring for your premature baby. Topics include:
Managing the High-Risk Pregnancy: Stalling preterm labor, coping with bed rest, medications to help the baby
The First Twenty-four Hours after Delivery: What to expect right after the baby's born, coping with insurance, and more
Your Preemie's Growth and Maturation: What to expect in terms of physical appearance and development for 24-, 28-, and 32-week preemies
The NICU: What the neonatal intensive care unit looks like, equipment and staff, and how to be a good NICU parent
Bringing Your Preemie Home: Getting your home ready, managing anxiety, feeding your preemie, keeping Dad involved
Later-Life Development: Health, growth, and cognitive and psychological development as your baby matures
Prematurity and the Special Needs Child: How to help your child lead a full life

Featuring the most up-to-date medical information available and filled with the voices of dozens of parents who've been in your shoes, this reassuring guide will help you make the best choices for yourself and your baby.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A superb book that should be required reading for parents with prematurely born infants."
-- Ralph D. Feigin, M.D., President and CEO, Baylor College of Medicine, Chairman, Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children's Hospital

"An invaluable tool for families who find themselves coping with the myriad medical, emotional, financial, and mind-numbing decisions that follow a premature birth. Finally someone has written a comprehensive and very personal guide that answers all the tough questions these traumatized parents don't even know how to ask. . . . This is the book I've been waiting for."
-- Candace Hurley, Executive Director/Founder, Sidelines National Support Network

"This book is a wonderful resource for parents experiencing a high-risk pregnancy or parents of a premature infant. Readers will realize that they are not alone--that others have gone through similar experiences and have similar feelings. As a neonatologist and a parent of a premature infant, I found this book to be very informative and engaging and recommend it highly for physicians, nurses, and other professionals caring for premature infants."
-- Thomas N. Hansen, M.D., CEO, Children's Hospital, Chairman, Department of Pediatrics, Ohio State University

From the Inside Flap

"What's happening to me? Is my baby going to be okay?"

Maybe you're reading this guide because you've been told you're at high risk for having a premature baby. Or perhaps you're reading it after your baby's unexpectedly early birth, and you're wondering what the future holds for this incredibly tiny person. You'll find all the answers you need in this comprehensive guide for parents, the first book to fully discuss both coping with high-risk pregnancy and caring for your premature baby. Topics include:
Managing the High-Risk Pregnancy: Stalling preterm labor, coping with bed rest, medications to help the baby
The First Twenty-four Hours after Delivery: What to expect right after the baby's born, coping with insurance, and more
Your Preemie's Growth and Maturation: What to expect in terms of physical appearance and development for 24-, 28-, and 32-week preemies
The NICU: What the neonatal intensive care unit looks like, equipment and staff, and how to be a good NICU parent
Bringing Your Preemie Home: Getting your home ready, managing anxiety, feeding your preemie, keeping Dad involved
Later-Life Development: Health, growth, and cognitive and psychological development as your baby matures
Prematurity and the Special Needs Child: How to help your child lead a full life

Featuring the most up-to-date medical information available and filled with the voices of dozens of parents who've been in your shoes, this reassuring guide will help you make the best choices for yourself and your baby.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (November 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812931092
• ISBN-13: 978-0812931099
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,207,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, November 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: What to Do When Your Baby Is Premature: A Parent's Handbook for Coping with High-Risk Pregnancy and Caring for the Preterm Infant (Paperback)

This book has been a God-send. Its clear, comprehensive text, helpful illustrations, and authoritative advice (the lead author is a top Houston neonatologist) is just what my husband and I needed when we found out our baby was going to be born prematurely.

We especially liked all of the stories and testimony from parents, people who have experienced the fear and uncertainty of high-risk pregnancy. Their stories are incredibly reassuring. We needed to know we weren't alone.

This book is a must-have for any parent whose pregnancy is not going as planned.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars essential for (expecting) preemie-parents, November 21, 2001

By 

"avigail_h" (Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What to Do When Your Baby Is Premature: A Parent's Handbook for Coping with High-Risk Pregnancy and Caring for the Preterm Infant (Paperback)

Upon hearing you're pregnant, most people will only have images of perfect babies. When hearing something is going wrong with your pregnancy, most people have no idea what to expect.
When I heared I was going to have my baby within half an hour, at 26 weeks of pregnancy... I had no idea what was laying ahead of me.
This book prepares you on what to expect when you have a high-risk pregnancy and takes you trough the 24 hours after delivery, your preemies growth and maturation, the neonatal unit, bringing your baby home and later-life development. There is also a part on babies with special needs and a part about when things go wrong.
From the many lonely hours I could not be with my baby, I spent many reading this book. The stories of other parents helped me survivng the nicu and the many charts and statistics helped me to get an image on what to expect.

Thank you very much for this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book for a high risk pregnancy and the NICU, July 17, 2001

By 

Christina Walton (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What to Do When Your Baby Is Premature: A Parent's Handbook for Coping with High-Risk Pregnancy and Caring for the Preterm Infant (Paperback)

A very helpful book for reading during your high-risk pregnancy and when your baby is in the NICU. I did think that the anecdotes about women's experiences with terbutaline and magnesium sulfate were unnecessarily alarming. This book complemented Linden's Essential Guide for Parnets of Premature Babies nicely.