Worry-Free Premature Baby Development

Consider this: Parents of a premature baby are often victims of emotional pressure and stress. In fact, parents are often depressed when they become aware of apparently slow development of their premature baby.

Many well-meaning friends and family unknowingly also add pressure with their comments and remarks. What worse... their words appear to be true when you start comparing premature baby development with full pregnancy period children.

But, let me ask you... what will you do if you know

What if you can totally focus your attention and efforts to really benefit your child?

What's more... if you use the right method, you'll surely do the right things to boost premature baby development. And you'll instantly start making obvious progress.

Let's be honest... chances are that you, your friends and family have unknowingly used your premature baby's chronological age... that's real age... to make your judgements and comments. And to set your expectations.

You see, research has found that it is much, much more realistic to use "corrected age" as a measure of premature baby development.

In short...

But now you can easily use corrected age... the true correct measure. This is done in 2 easy steps.

First... work out how many weeks premature your baby was born? Also called premature period.

Premature period is calculated by subtracting actual pregnancy time from 40 weeks (normal full pregnancy period).

So, a baby born at 28 weeks of pregnancy is (40-28) = 12 weeks premature. Premature period is therefore... 12 weeks.

Second... calculate corrected age.

Corrected age is real age minus premature period.

Let's suppose this baby is now 5 months old... that is 20 weeks. Thus real, chronological age is now 20 weeks.

Corrected age is real age minus premature period... that is
20 weeks minus 12 weeks premature = 8 weeks.

So... the corrected age for this baby is 8 weeks. Stated a little differently, if Baby experienced full pregnancy, Baby would now only be 8 weeks old.

If you measure Baby's performance at real age (20 weeks after birth), you'll probably find that development is slower than expected. But, if you measure performance using the corrected age (8 weeks), then Baby may be doing quite well.

Also, say a development milestone is given for a specific age group (say 4 to 6 month olds), Baby will most likely only reach this specific milestone aged 6 months. Many other full pregnancy period children will reach this milestone at 4 months.

But... while you may be using corrected age to get a more realistic idea of your baby's performance... you still have another important duty.

You'll surely realize your premature baby's development may be slower than is expected of full pregnancy period children.

So... constantly try to reduce this premature baby development gap (12 weeks in our example) until you've reduced it to zero.

What does this mean?

Only this...

... until Baby's performance equals real age expectations.

Impossible? On the contrary... you can easily reduce this gap by regularly using stimulation techniques and educational toys.

So, start using corrected age. It gives a more realistic promise of your child's performance. You may also want to use the following information on premature baby development.

What this all boils down to is... stop worrying about how far your child's performance may be lacking and rather fully focus your attention on stimulating and encouraging Baby's development.