Premature babies appear thin, fragile, with deep red skin and wrinkled appearance. They lack muscle tone making them appear limp and flexible. However, they enjoy firm gentle touch. Most premies can see shapes and objects. Their eye sight is like all babies and may improve with time. Extremely premie babies may have problems called “Retinopathy of Prematurely” where back of the eye is damaged. Early and regular eye checkups are advocated for early detection and treatment.
Babies with respiratory distress may develop fast breathing within minutes or hours of birth. Babies with mild respiratory distress may only require extra oxygen through head box whereas babies with severe respiratory distress may get tired of breathing and are placed on ventilators. It is common for the brain of the premie to “forget to tell” the lungs to breathe. This may result in the absence of breathing for 15 seconds or more that is called “Apnoea” or “Anoxia” that may be associated with fall in the heart rate (brady cardia). Breathing can be stimulated by gentle touch or resuscitation. A premie with recurrent apnoeas may necessitate placing the baby on ventilator to assist breathing. Another thing is that the blood vessels of the premie are more fragile and may rapture leading to future handicap to the baby. This can be diagnosed by ultrasound or CT-scan of the brain.
Premature babies are more prone to fall in hemoglobin and require repeated blood transfusions. All parents should take their babies for “Hepatitis-B” immunization schedule as prescribed. Besides, when “Sepsis” (infection in blood) is found owing to low resistance, it is cured by antibiotics to which the child is not resistant. If such babies are not energetic enough to suck or take spoon feed, they are fed intravenously by fluids containing nutrients that are directly put into the blood stream.

Question: Is a special diet necessary for the lactating mother? Is there anything particularly harmful?
It is not necessary for a lactating mother to have a special diet. An ordinary, middle-class vegetarian meal with the daily consumption of 3 glasses of milk is good for the health of both, the feeding mother and her sucking infant. Various communities all over the world are rife with superstitions and beliefs regarding food requirements of delivery and breast feeding — avoid sour food, take less ghee, take more ghee, avoid cold drinks and many others. Certain substances in the mother’s diet enter the milk and thereby reach the child’s stomach. Keeping this in mind, it is beneficial to take dill seeds, bishopweed seeds, garlic and dry ginger over and above regular meals. These, indirectly exert a good influence on the child as well.
Any food which causes indigestion and gas or does not suit the mother’s system may, similarly affect the child and, cause diarrhea, stomach ache, cold and other ailments.
In short, a routine, square meal with fair amounts of pulses and vegetables, in addition to adequate consumption of milk ensure proper lactation and prevents weakness. It is the practice in many families to give porridge, gruel and similar preparations to the feeding mother. It’s fine to take these if possible. Remember, any medicine taken is going to reach the child in greater or lesser proportion and should not be taken without medical advice.

Pregnancy often brings on a multitude of sleep disturbances including nausea, heartburn, restless leg syndrome, and snoring. These sometimes unavoidable problems may be aggravated by bad sleeping habits that you established before you were pregnant.
During the initial three months of your pregnancy you are likely to feel surprisingly drained and fatigued. During this time your sleep-inducing hormone progesterone starts surging through your body. You may notice that you need more rest during the day and more sleep during the night. This is due to the new demands pregnancy is making on your system. Your body is trying to cope with the dramatic changes in the hormone levels. During the second trimester, your body will get more used to the changes.
In the third trimester, again, particularly from about six weeks before your baby is born, you will feel quite exhausted and will feel the need for more rest, although your physical strength might have increased progressively, remember that your baby is now becoming heavier, it is growing and developing all the time, and its movements are more noticeable now. That is the reason for feeling fatigued as also the need for additional hours of rest and sleep.

1. Depression. However hard you may try to convince yourself otherwise, this is bound to creep up on you sometime or the other.
2. Lassitude, lethargy and a general lack of well-being.
3. Proneness to respiratory difficulties, hypertension and other heart problems.
4. Serious difficulties in reproduction, menstrual abnormalities.
5. Increase in body temperature, leading to rashes.
6. Increased proneness to diabetes.
If you are unable to regain your pre-pregnancy hourglass figure, at least make sure you aren’t saddled with an unhealthy, untoned and flabby body for the rest of your life. Some women allow themselves to gorge and gorge when they’re pregnant, thinking that they’ll lose it all later. They continue to gorge all the more when they’re breast-feeding. Later they get lazy and manage, at best, to put in a half-hearted and low-spirited attempt to take off what they had very enthusiastically worked towards putting on.
One, woman, with the help of a weight loss centre, knocked off about 20 kilos that she had put on during her pregnancy. Consequently, during her second pregnancy, she allowed herself to put on 25 kilos, secure in the knowledge that the weight loss centre was still around. Little did she know that each successive time, due to various metabolic factors, it gets more and more difficult to lose weight after a pregnancy.

It is quite common to have sleep difficulties during pregnancy. There are several reasons for this.
Increase in metabolism — Your baby is growing and developing inside your womb all the time—around the clock. So its metabolism doesn’t slow down when evening comes—or when it is time to sleep for you. Your body needs to supply food and oxygen all the time for its regular growth. Your wakefulness could be a result of that.
Indigestion - Whether you are pregnant or nor, indigestion always creates sleep problems. So, during pregnancy you need to be more careful about it as indigestion and heartburn are very common during this period.
Frequent urination - Your growing uterus puts pressure on your bladder because of which you feel like peeing more frequently. This also makes you wake up in the middle of the night.
Cramps - Many women complain about leg cramps that are bad enough to disrupt sleep.