The most valuable medicines for premature babies

Premature birth is an extreme stress for the whole family, but especially for the mother and the baby. While doctors are saving a new tiny life, a woman is left alone with her emotions and experiences. Stress, fatigue, self-blame – all this negatively affects a woman's condition. The pain and despair of not being able to help your child, to put him or her to the breast, to feed him or her the most valuable thing – breast milk, which is one of the most necessary medicines for a prematurely born child, because the nutrition of such babies has many features: an increased need for nutrition, while babies have a small stomach volume, as well as problems with digestion, coordination of sucking and swallowing reflexes.

The organization of feeding preterm infants is based on timely and adequate provision of nutrients and energy, starting from the first days of life. Timely and balanced nutrition helps to ease the course of the adaptation period and further reduce the risk of developing a number of diseases, especially such dangerous diseases as sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis (according to research, this dangerous disease occurs in half of children born prematurely with a low birth weight of up to 2 kg and in 65% of babies with critically low birth weight of up to 1.5 kg, and requires long-term treatment, surgery, and can lead to disability).

In addition, enteral feeding with mother's milk, even through a tube, reduces the risk of nosocomial infection and hospital-acquired diseases and promotes faster intestinal maturation, proper development of the retina (premature babies are at high risk of developing retinopathy of prematurity), and proper development and growth of the child's bones and tissues. That is why breastfeeding such babies is not just about food. It is one of the most necessary treatments a baby needs for a possible healthy future. And it is this treatment that can be provided by the closest and dearest person to him – his mother. However, due to the difficult psycho-emotional state of a woman (premature birth, war, uncertainty in the future), a woman may have significant problems with breastfeeding, as this process is very fragile and depends on many factors. In this case, a clinical breast pump can help a woman.

The goal of our project is to meet the most basic need of babies from all over Poltava region, especially preterm infants, for breast milk, which is the most useful and necessary food and medicine for them, by purchasing a KITETT(R) FISIO(R) PRO clinical breast pump complete with KOLOR(R) pumping kits and donating it to the perinatal center at Poltava Regional Clinical Hospital*. It is the clinical breast pump that plays an important role in launching and maintaining milk production in a new mother, helping mothers to maintain and establish breastfeeding. Breast milk adapts to the situation of the mother and baby and acts as medicine. 

Thanks to this project, more than 3,000 babies (including prematurely born) from Poltava region will be able to receive help every year, and their mothers will be able to establish breastfeeding, providing their babies with food that is both the most valuable medicine and protection.

Every child can become a superhero regardless of the circumstances!

*Full name of the medical institution: Municipal Enterprise "Poltava Regional Clinical Hospital named after M.V. Sklifosovskyi of the Poltava Regional Council".