New guide focuses on family-centred care for parents of premature babies
Parents of premature babies are to receive more help caring for their newborns.
Around 4,500 children are born before their due date in Ireland each year.
The Better Together guide being launched today focuses on family-centred care and shows mothers and fathers how they can take a more active role during their baby's stay in hospital.
Mandy Daly, director of advocacy and policymaking at the Irish Neonatal Health Alliance, described the difficulties these parents can endure.
"They will have experienced separation at birth, they may not have had to opportunity to bond with their child, they may not have seen their child," she said.
"It's a very traumatic experience being separated from, I suppose, what you've been expecting and hoping for for a couple of months.
"Then there's the added stress of parents not knowing the prognosis is going to turn out, and they can't care for the child in a normal parenting fashion."
