Or perhaps just a few. Instruments hooked up to this tiny patient, held by researcher Alice Hill, measure sucking frequency and pattern. Slow and steady does not win this race. A preterm baby must put on weight as fast as possible, so getting nutrients into the little one takes on a special urgency.
Many preterm infants have trouble bottle-feeding.
To help them, nurses support the baby's weak cheek muscles and jaw by using a thumb and two fingers to cradle and elevate the chin. The technique aids a baby's natural sucking motion, but the evidence of success has been anecdotal, and nurses have worried whether induced sucking can cause breathing problems. With a grant from the American Nurses Foundation, Alice T. Hill, UTMB associate professor of maternal and child health, and her colleagues can now monitor preterm infants' sucking rate and rhythm. Hill is leading a study at Houston's LBJ Hospital that has so far looked at 20 infants, between 8 and 6 weeks premature, who have difficulty feeding. Tiny gauges taped to babies' cheekbones and looped under their chins record the number of sucks, pauses between sucks and sucking bursts, or a rapid-fire pattern of sucking.