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Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Wee Care Program:
Feeding Your Baby in the NICU

Cue base feedings, an individualized approach to feeding your baby, recognize the social and interactive nature of feeding. To adopt this standard of feeding care in our NICU, the entire staff was educated and trained in the benefits of cue base feedings. A feeding readiness and quality of nippling scale was specifically created for our NICU. Nippling takes a lot of work for babies. They need to learn how to suck, swallow and breathe effectively. Being premature, this can be challenging for them.

With time and practice, they will be able to do all three of these things before they go home with you. Regular nursing assessments of your baby with the feeding readiness behaviors will happen with every set of care by your nurse. At approximately 34 weeks gestation and depending on your baby's score, either you and/or your nurse will attempt to bottle-feed your baby. Some of these behaviors such as rooting, alert state and sucking on his/her hand(s) and/or pacifier will tell the nurse your baby is ready to start eating. After your baby bottle-feeds, they will be scored using the quality of nippling scale. You will see the improvements of your baby's score as they grow bigger and stronger!

When bottle feeding your premature baby, it's a great idea to try laying your baby on his/her side during feeding. This may look and feel awkward at first; however, by doing this, you are controlling the amount of breast milk or formula your baby is getting with each suck. This helps prevent your baby from drinking too much and choking. With time and lots of practice, your baby will learn how to suck, swallow and breathe safely.