What is TPN?

Total parenteral nutrition, or TPN, is a way of giving your baby the nutrition they need directly into their bloodstream through an IV until they can tolerate food in their intestines.

When babies are born premature, their body isn't ready to digest milk or formula yet so TPN is given to provide nutrition until your baby can slowly increase the amount of food they are taking in.

TPN is made up of several important parts:

• Sugar (glucose):

  This gives your baby energy—kind of like fuel for their brain and body.

• Protein (amino acids):

  This helps your baby grow—building muscles, organs, and tissues.

• Fats (lipids):

  These are really important for brain development and also provide extra calories for growth.

• Vitamins:

  These support overall health, like helping the body heal and function properly.

• Minerals and electrolytes (like sodium, potassium, calcium):

  These help with things like fluid balance, bone strength, and how the heart and muscles work.

• Water:

  This keeps your baby hydrated and helps everything circulate properly.

Your baby's medical providers will adjust the different components of the TPN based on what your baby needs by looking at their labs and how they are growing.

As your baby starts to be able to tolerate increasing amount of feeds through a nasogastric or orogastric (NG/OG) tube, which is a little tube that goes from their nose or mouth into their stomachs which is how feeds gets delivered when they are too immature to be able to breast of bottle feed, the amount of TPN will decrease and eventually be stopped. This will mean that they are getting all their nutrition from their feeds and no longer need TPN.