BOTTLE FEEDING READINESS IN PRETERM INFANTS

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DESCRIPTION: Bottle-feeding of preterm infants is both a routine and essential aspect of hospital care. Yet even routine caregiving activities, such as feeding, may cause adverse reactions in preterm infants if not managed appropriately. Since there are no universally accepted criteria for determining if a preterm infant is ready to bottle feed, the already vulnerable infant is subject to a trial-and-error approach to this most critical life-sustaining activity. Providing care (i.e., bottle feeding) when the infant indicated readiness to receive care has been suggested as a way to minimize potential adverse reactions to caregiving activities. Thus, the primary aim of this study is to test a predictive model of bottle-feeding readiness and bottle-feeding outcomes. Bottle-feeding readiness includes the infant's neurologic maturation, severity of illness, and pre-feeding autonomic, motor, and behavioral state organization. Bottle feeding outcomes include during and post-feeding autonomic, motor, and behavioral state organization, suck-swallow-breathe coordination, and feeding performance. A secondary aim of the study will be to examine how bottle-feeding experience influences both bottle-feeding readiness and bottle-feeding outcomes. This non-experimental, observational study will use data obtained from medical records and 10 to 14 feeding observations each for 95 infants beginning at 32 weeks post-conception age. Data will be analyzed with a variety of statistical techniques dependent on the measurement level of the variables. Continuous response measures will be modeled using MANOVA. Categorical variables will be modeled using logistic regression.