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On the day you deliver your baby, you'll probably be overcome with visions of your future with your child - first smiles and steps, birthday parties and sports events, and holidays and life milestones. Your little one ever becoming seriously ill will probably be the last thing on your mind.

Baby-care basics:
Getting Help After the Birth
Handling a Newborn
Bonding and Soothing Techniques
Diapering Dos and Don'ts
Bathing Basics
Circumcision and Umbilical Cord Care
Feeding and Burping Your Baby
Sleeping Basicsv

Once a baby is born, he or she needs to breathe continuously to get oxygen. In a premature baby, the part of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) that controls breathing is not yet mature enough to allow nonstop breathing. This causes large bursts of breath followed by periods of shallow breathing or stopped breathing. The medical term for this condition is apnea of prematurity, or AOP.

What's the purpose of the umbilical cord?

How long will my baby have an umbilical stump?

Does the stump require special care?

Anatomy of the Nervous System
If you think of the brain as a central computer that controls all the functions of your body, then the nervous system is like a network that relays messages back and forth from it to different parts of the body. It does this via the spinal cord, which runs from the brain down through the back and contains threadlike nerves that branch out to every organ and body part.v