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Arriving early: premature babies

Babies are considered premature when they’re born before they reach 37 weeks. Roughly 10% of births in NZ are premature.
If you do have a baby who is born prematurely they’ll require special care, so you’ll need to maintain close contact with your lead maternity carer.

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Have your say...

Megan's Comment

My son was born 5 weeks premature. He is finally home after a few weeks in neo natal. It's a hard road and leaving your baby at the hospital at the end of the day is tough. So to all those parents with premmy babies hang in there it does get easier and is an amazing feeling when you finally get home.

Natalie's Comment

My son was born 2 months premature and couldn't breathe on his own. But he was a fighter and he came home after being in the neonatal unit for 1 month and 1 day. He is now 4 months and as healthy as he can be. It was hard having to leave him each day during his stay at the hospital but he was in good hands and at the time it was the best place for him. I have so much appreciation for those at the Auckland & Middlemore Neonatal Units for everything they did for my son and for all those other little babies. They do such an amazing job helping premature babies get the best start to life! I am truly grateful for every last person at both hospitals who helped take care of my boy!

sandra's Comment

My Daughter was born 4 weeks early but only because I had eclampsia, which is pretty scary when your already had 3 other normal full term births previous. I had to be induced. She was 5lb birth weight which is pretty good considering. I had to stay in hospital for a week to make sure I was ok. Being a bit prem I found it hard for her to latch on as one of my nipples was to big for her little mouth and the other side I hardly used for my other children as I could never latch them to that side so I never know how to put babies in a position that made it easy and not hurt, so the whole time in hospital I needed help to latch her to feed and gain weight, as the loss 10% of their birth weight. The night and day before I returned home a hospital midwife (A.K.A Midnight special) Thanks to her she showed me the football hold way to breast feed and I managed to put her on both sides and with ease. Now she is nearly 3 months and doing great as am I

Rachel's Comment

My Daughter was born 4 months early (23 weeks, 555gram) and yes, that is scary!!!! She was bridge position and from the normal birth she had a brain bleed. She also have chronic lungs disease and got a skin infection from all the work they had to do on her to keep her well. She was on oxygen until 3 weeks ago and wasn't doing to well with her feeding either. She had a NGT tube (feeding tube) in since she was born but on boxing day 2014 she decided she want's it out and pulled it out completely. We are still going strong with bottle feeding after the NNU said that she will be on it for a long time. It took us a while to find the right formula as she was used to breast-milk and most formula's in store tastes very bitter. Nurture Original is the only formula that she love's and now that we've find what she likes, we try and increase her volume per feed as she only did 20-30ml per feed, that was worrying but now she's doing 70 ml's !!! But after been with her all the way in NICU for 5 months (and far away from home) we made it home about a month ago. And, now that she's off the oxygen completely and without the feeding tube, we can carry on as a normal family.

****To all the mums with prem babies, hang in there. You will get through this and remember, there is always someone else who is going through a lot worse. We are soooo lucky to have our little girl but we won't change anything in our journey****

Reply from The for Baby Team

Hi Rachel,
Thank you for your inspiring story and we are so glad to hear your little girl is doing well after such a challenging start!
All the very best from our team for the year ahead,
All the best