It is really exciting when a family is making plans for a new baby. As the anticipation builds, it might seem like the sooner the baby arrives the better. However, babies need to complete important stages of brain development before they are born. Doctors consider babies born before they have reached the normal 37–40 weeks of time inside the mother to be "preterm". Worldwide, about 11% of babies are born preterm. Most of these babies are born just a few weeks early. A small group of these babies are born extremely preterm, meaning they are born before 28 weeks of development. The earlier a baby is born the more vulnerable their brain is to injury. Brain injury can happen when a baby is born early because the baby's brain development is disrupted. The brain injuries that babies experience can affect them for the rest of their lives. Doctors and neuroscientists are still trying to understand how to help the brains of preterm babies develop normally and reduce brain injury so that the babies do not have problems with their brains when they grow up.

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Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00020