The bill contains a directive to FDA to regulate all donor human milk to ensure this vital nutrition for vulnerable babies is safe and of the highest quality.

Racial disparities in the care received by babies born prematurely -- and with low birth weight -- and their mothers might be narrowing and generating improvements in overall survival, a study published Wednesday has found.

It’s likely that over the last few months you’ll have had to adapt almost every aspect of your life because of Covid-19. For new families and parents-to-be, this has been especially uncertain.

Some 80 million babies around the world are at higher risk of diseases like diphtheria, measles, and polio as the coronavirus pandemic hinders routine vaccination programs, global health officials warned Friday.

The CDC issued new guidelines saying that all babies who are born to women with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 should be tested 24 hours after birth and then retested the next day if they test negative. 

A small study in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology that followed 16 pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 found evidence of injury to the placenta in all the women, and 15 of the women delivered healthy babies, none of whom tested positive for COVID-19.

A study in Pediatrics found that awake prone positioning, or tummy time, for infants was positively associated with the ability to move while rolling, crawling, supine and prone; prevention of brachycephaly, decreased body mass index; and gross motor and total development. 

Even if their first pregnancy results in a full-term baby, women who had complications may be at increased risk of a preterm delivery next time around, researchers say.

A research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association details the case of a 28-year-old pregnant woman at 19 weeks' gestation who had a nasopharyngeal swab that was positive for SARS-CoV-2, as well as multiple symptoms including diarrhea, dry cough, myalgia and fever.

A study in The New England Journal of Medicine details the case of a 3-week-old infant with COVID-19 in Texas who arrived at the hospital with low oxygen saturation, temperature of 97 degrees, reduced eating, rapid breathing, and heart rate and nasal congestion, and was transferred to a pediatric intensive care unit with continued rapid heart rate and breathing, hypothermia, and low blood pressure, with lung X-rays showing signs of pneumonia. The infant was discharged from the PICU after five days on a ventilator and treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and had recovered on day nine.

Physicians worry that concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are keeping parents from bringing their children in for well-checks and needed vaccinations. Data show administration of measles, mumps and rubella shots dropped by 50%; diphtheria and whooping cough shots by 42%; and HPV vaccines by 73% in early April, compared with mid-February.

A study in the Journal of the American Heart Association showed that the congenital heart disease incidence rates of live-born infants who were in quartile four of social deprivation and quartile four for exposure to environmental pollutants were 1.31 times and 1.24 times higher, respectively, compared with those in quartile one.

Researchers studied 2,000 adults ages 34 to 49 and found that those who were exposed to parental tobacco smoke during childhood had lower cognitive performance scores, compared with those who had no parental secondhand smoke exposure. The findings were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in Pediatrics that offers guidance on home births and appropriate care of mothers and infants. The AAP recommended that at least two health care professionals be present, one of them specifically responsible for care of newborn infants immediately after birth, including initiation of appropriate resuscitation measures, provision of warmth and assignment of Apgar scores, and that infants should be monitored closely during the transitional period

A study in the journal Nature found that 9% of infants who were fed breast milk or a mixture of breast and bottle feeds carried harmful viruses in their guts by four months of age, compared with 30% of those who were fed formula milk only. The findings were based on data involving 125 babies in the US.

There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 undergoes intrauterine or transplacental transmission from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-infected pregnant women to fetuses, according to a study published online March 17 in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.

A new center at Erlanger is helping premature babies with their development.

The Family Advisory Council at Erlanger and the Forrest Spence Fund teamed up to create the NICU Development Center

Minnesota’s only pediatric hospital is launching a telehealth program to extend neonatal care to six hospitals across the state.

Parents who've spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) carry anxiety with them even after their baby is released.

Fewer than a quarter of infants exposed perinatally to hepatitis C virus (HCV) undergo testing for the virus, according to a database study.

Singing a lullaby to your newborn may seem like second nature, but therapists say singing has powerful health benefits too.

Lodge Community School students carefully sorted through mounds of thin cotton sheets, heart-shaped stickers and letters to pick items for their Valentine's Day costumes.

Either tetanus and diphtheria toxoids (Td) vaccine or tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine may be used for Td booster doses every 10 years or when indicated for tetanus prophylaxis in wound management, according to research published in the Jan. 24 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The survival of preterm babies jumped by 25 per cent after new practices were introduced in neonatal units across Canada, according to a study of nearly 51,000 infants between 2004 to 2017.

The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission urged stakeholders to find ways to facilitate care coordination and unify state programs and policies to reduce the number of infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, which has risen along with the number of pregnant women with opioid use disorder. 

Researchers found that children whose mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy had lower birth weight and worse cognitive functioning, compared with those without prenatal alcohol exposure.

CDC researchers found that the overall rate of infant deaths due to birth defects in the US dropped by 10% between 2003 and 2017, with declines of 12% among whites, 11% among blacks and 4% among Hispanics during the same period.

Babies whose mothers drank alcohol and smoked after the first trimester of pregnancy had a twelvefold increased likelihood of dying from sudden infant death syndrome, compared with those without prenatal alcohol and tobacco exposure, researchers reported in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine.

A study in The Lancet that followed 8,400 low birth weight babies in India from 2015 to 2018 found "kangaroo care," or when mothers held their babies close to their bodies for more than 12 hours a day, increased babies' chance of survival as much as 30% within the first month and 25% within the first six months.