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Your Baby’s Lungs
The lungs of your premature baby can often have problems because they need almost 40 weeks to develop completely. Your baby's airways, alveoli (tiny air sacs, like balloons, in the lungs), and lung surfactant (a soaplike, lubricating liquid in the lining of the lungs) also need time to develop.
At 27 weeks of pregnancy, your baby's airways and alveoli are present, but his muscles are weak
and his respiratory or breathing system is still underdeveloped. Until the 36th week of pregnancy,
he may not have enough surfactant to keep the air sacs open. Even at 40 weeks, babies are born
with only 10% of the millions of alveoli that they'll have as adults.
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* IMS DDD Lung Surfactant Market Purchases July 1991 through June 2007. On file, Abbott Nutrition Marketing Research.
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