When Vincent entered the world, he was literally ahead of his time. The stress of coping with a baby clinging to life and the continuing difficulties of nurturing a premature baby at home prompted Anne Casey, Vincent's mother, to form a network of parents of premature babies, called Austprem, and now they have gone online as a virtual community. The Internet allows us to contact each other at any hour, share our experiences and gain support and access to knowledge. The Austprem site is one of many community groups going online through a State Government initiative, My Connected Community , launched yesterday at the Royal Women's Hospital by the Minister for State and Regional Development, and Treasurer, John Brumby. Multimedia Victoria, part of the Department of State and Regional Development, provides the funds, and VicNet, the Internet arm of the State Library, helps develop and hosts the sites.
Most people think now that it's fine to have an extremely premature baby.
They have no idea what's happening to these babies. She found the constant ferrying to and from hospital, followed by the at-home care needed for, in her case, a child left with cerebral palsy, a very stressful experience. The impact of the attention demands of a premature baby can come at the expense of other family members, she said. Austprem's patron, neonatologist Dr Guan Koh, said doctors wanting to specialise in neonatal medicine should go beyond textbook training and live few weeks with the family of a premature baby to understand the strains. The Internet provided a a way in which common experiences could be shared with access to information a few clicks away, he said.