This is a secondary analysis of a larger project entitled Breast-feeding Services for LBW Infants-Outcomes and Costs (L. Brown, RN, Ph.D., Principal Investigator), funded by NINR at NIH, (NR 03881). The larger project was a randomized clinical trial, of women planning to breast-feed their LBW infant. The control group received routine breast-feeding care and an intervention group received a structured program of breast-feeding services provided by an advanced practice nurse.
Healthy premature LBW infants from the control group were selected as subjects for this secondary analysis. One question of this secondary analysis was to describe the nutrition of healthy premature LBW infants over time. A longitudinal prospective descriptive design was implemented collecting data from the same group of babies from birth to six month corrected age.
Fifty infants from the larger study fit the study criteria of healthy breast-feeding LBW premature infants. Nutritional intakes of these infants were described
