Your Premature Baby and Child: Helpful Answers and Advice for Parents(1999) provides a huge amount of information on everything from breastfeeding to CPR to managing a gavage tube. Better yet, it is up-to-date, easy to read, and illustrated with helpful illustrations, graphs and tables. The authors, Amy E. Tracy and Diane I. Mahoney, R.N., know their subject; both delivered prematurely and spent the first few months of motherhood in an neonatal intensive care unit. In fact, they wrote the book because "of our need for information and our desire to help other preemie families" (xv).
The manual covers a large portion of the preemie experience, from bringing your child home to sending him off to school. The first chapter, "Before Your Preemie Comes Home," provides excellent tips on what you should know before you leave the hospital. The checklist (pp. 15-17) at the end of the chapter is especially useful to parents at this stage. Chapter 3, "Bringing the NICU Home with You," provides excellent information on how to use the hospital equipment with which your child may be sent home. The book also contains a chapter on developmental concerns, as well as information on early intervention. The final pages deal with finding an appropriate preschool and other early education issues.
You Premature Baby and Child provides excellent information, especially tailored to parents who have completed the NICU experience. It is a thorough guide that would be handy to have on a shelf as a reference. It is available at bookstores on- and offline, as well as at your local library.
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