Understanding your preterm or sick baby in hospital
Postnatal (0 - 6 Months)

Having a preterm or sick baby cared for in a hospital can be an overwhelming experience, filled with uncertainties, fear, and stress. This online course has been designed to help you learn about your baby’s development, understand their needs and read their cues, but also to support your emotional wellbeing as parents or other relatives.

Understanding your preterm or sick baby in hospital is for all parents, grandparents and carers of babies experiencing neonatal care. It has been designed to help you develop a strong and connected relationship with your baby and includes both practical information about caring for your baby as well as information about their developmental needs and guidance for feeding, sleeping and crying.

Understanding your preterm or sick baby

Understanding your preterm or sick baby in hospital has been developed by a team of Clinical Psychologists, Child Psychotherapists, Healthcare professionals and, importantly, parents with shared experience. Everything you will follow and learn in the course has been informed by experience and is designed to be practical, to help you and your family navigate your NICU time. You’ll also learn about your own emotional health needs and nurture your relationship with your baby.

The course follows six Modules, each taking around 20 minutes and broken up into manageable chunks called Units.

The first few Modules cover some ways of thinking and concepts that will help shape the approaches and ideas around the later sections, so this means it needs to be followed in order, one Module at a time. You don’t need to do it all in one go, and our advice is to take breaks and spread out your learning.

Understanding your preterm or sick baby in hospital is designed for all parents and relatives of babies experiencing neonatal care, but you might find that perhaps you begin to feel you would benefit from more personalised or specialist support, so there are some additional resources signposted throughout to guide you.

A second course, Understanding your preterm or sick baby now you’re home, is also available for you for free when you’re ready.

We know that there are many different families, with different backgrounds, shapes and sizes. We have tried to consider some of the different needs of families in this course, but it hasn't been possible to account for all backgrounds. If your personal situation isn’t reflected, we still hope that you find something helpful in the main ideas about developing close, connected relationships between parents and children and welcome your feedback to improve its relevance.