Development in Babies Born Early

Development in Babies Born Early

• Making sure your baby is developing normally is something parents and pediatricians spend a lot of time thinking about.
• When thinking about what your baby “should” be able to do, it’s important to take into account how early your baby was born.
• When a baby is born early, we don’t expect her to have all the skills of a baby who was born full term.
• Instead, we expected her to have the skills of her Corrected Age.

Calculating Corrected Age

1. What is her age in weeks?
2. How many weeks early was she born?
3. Corrected age = current age - weeks early

Example:

1. Your baby is 4 months, which is 16 weeks old.
2. She was born at 36 weeks, which is 4 weeks early.
3. Her corrected age: 16 weeks - 4 weeks = 12 weeks.

In this example, we would expect your 4 month old baby to have the same developmental skills as a normal 3 month old.