After your baby leaves hospital, they will have regular health and development checks and sometimes additional specialist care, depending on their medical and developmental needs. If you’re in the UK, the following are some checks you can expect.

Six week check

The doctors will decide whether or not your baby needs any follow up after leaving the hospital.

Your health visitor will come to see you and your baby whether you are having follow-up or not, and you will be invited to the baby clinic for check-ups with your GP. Depending on the baby’s gestation, development, and medical needs, your baby may also be visited at home by a community nurse, who will monitor her growth and any symptoms of concern.

For some babies born after 31 weeks or so and with no medical concerns when they leave the unit, no specialist hospital or community follow-up Is necessary. Although it may seem scary to go home and not be offered a hospital appointment, it signifies that the medical team do not think that long-term problems are likely and want you to treat your baby like any other healthy infant.

All babies who are born at term and go straight home will have a six-week check-up with their GP, who will look at and ask about various aspects of their development. When babies have been born prematurely, some GPs will do the check when babies are actually six weeks old if they're home, even if they were born early. Others will wait until around their corrected gestational age – so six weeks after their due date.

Hospital follow-up

If necessary, your baby will be offered an appointment with the consultant at the hospital. If a baby spends the early part of their care at a Level Three neonatal unit and then moves to a hospital nearer home, she might be offered follow-up appointments at both centres. If your baby had surgery, they may also be offered follow-up at the hospital where that was done. Some babies may simply need to return to the hospital for one clinic appointment so that the medical team can do some blood tests and advise on whether certain treatments and medications need to be continued. If your baby was born very prematurely she will usually also be offered a hospital appointment to check her development when she's a year old.

Some babies require a specialist follow up, depending on their problems. For example, very small, sick babies, will often meet with an ophthalmologist for follow-up checks for the retinopathy of prematurity they will have been monitored for at the hospital. Babies with severe brain, heart, or other complex problems will probably require lifelong follow-ups. The care and financial burdens imposed by this can seem overwhelming, and we offer some support and information sources for parents below.

Coordinating your baby's care

If your baby has a number of specialists managing their medical care it can be overwhelming. Sometimes it feels as though one or both are coordinating everything, on top of caring for their baby. Ideally, you will have one clinician whose role it is to take this responsibility. This may be your GP, paediatrician, or a specialist nurse. It usually doesn't matter who it is as long as he or she is someone with access to all the relevant information and to the other professionals looking after your baby. He or she also needs to be easily accessible to you when you have a query. Some parents of premature babies design diaries or other administrative tools in which to keep track of their baby’s progress and records, though you shouldn’t feel you have to bear the weight of maintaining these if you are struggling. Some of us are more academically inclined than others and a professional should always be able to explain everything as many times as you need.

Your baby’s outlook and red book

As soon as you discover your baby has a problem and she is admitted to the neonatal unit, you will be worrying about what the future holds. Parents often ask if their child will have any developmental difficulties, for example in walking or talking, and how long they will have to wait to find out. The answers to such questions will vary hugely, and subtle difficulties may take a long time to develop.

Ultrasound scanning and, in some cases, MRI scans of the brain can provide doctors with a great deal of useful information about the kind of problems your baby may encounter in the future.

If you’re in the UK, you’ll be given a Personal Child Health Record, also called the 'red book’, before you leave the hospital. This has growth charts to plot your baby's growth and compare it with the average growth for their age.

If your baby was born before 32 weeks, their growth will be plotted in the low-birthweight chart. Babies born at 32–37 weeks are plotted in the preterm chart until 2 weeks after their estimated due date. After that, they are plotted in the main charts using their corrected age. As we’ve explained, this is measured from their due date rather than their birth date.

It may help you to look at your premature baby’s milestones as indicators of whether or not they need extra help rather than thinking of them as targets. Milestones set out in the red book will be carefully based on averages. For example, a term baby will be expected to walk between eight and 18 months. However, missing a milestone doesn’t always mean your baby has a problem and plenty of term babies will also miss them.

If major problems are anticipated you will be informed and updated. The only way of knowing for certain, however, about much of your baby's long-term development is to wait and see.

What follow-up care should my premature baby receive?

Unii looks at the healthcare support you can expect after your take your premature baby home.