>
> The criteria for discharge of a premature infant from the NICU are as
> follows:
> 1. Baby must be able to maintain his temperature outside of the isolette.
> 2. Baby needs to  be able to take all feedings by breast or bottle and
must
> be gaining wt.
> 3. Infant should be free of apnea/bradycardia for some specified amount of
> time (in our unit I think it is 3-4 days now--used to be longer). A last
> resort is to send the baby home on an apnea monitor, but we are doing this
> much less frequently these days  because of the great anxiety it can cause
> parents.
>

Just a question about this - why the requirement that the baby must take all
feedings by breast or bottle? We ran into this when my grandson was in the
NICU and he was being breastfed then "topped up" with EBM by gavage. We
wanted to try using a tube at the breast to give him the extra milk and felt
we could take him home feeding that way, but the pediatrician was insistent
that the baby had to have all feedings from either breast or bottle.

Teresa Pitman
Guelph, Ontario

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