Premature Baby: Catch-up-growth

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Ladies and gentlemen, standing at 13 in, weighing one pound, 15 oz, Jordy Kroger.

[00:00:11]>> 2 weeks old.

[00:00:13]>> Gentleman standing at like 30 in weighing 20 lb.

[00:00:19]Jordy Kroger.

[00:00:23]Premature babies are amazing to watch from a scientific perspective, but of course, this is an incredibly scary time for parents. Thankfully, we have made great progress in medicine. In the 1960s, survival rates for very small premature babies under 3 lbs was about 35%. Today, it is over 85% in modern centers. It is important to know that prematurity is usually driven by biology and not something that you did or didn't do. Once the babies are in the NICU and they stabilize, something amazing happens. they start to grow at a very accelerated rate. This is called catchup growth. Their body is basically shifting to overdrive and with the right nutrition, hormones surge and it helps them get back to their original genetic growth curve. And here's something that a lot of people don't realize. The brain and the lungs are still finishing developing outside of the womb. So the babies are born very premature. They continue to build this critical structures like brain folds right in the NICU isolate. And that is how adaptable and amazing the human body