ABSTRACT
How ‘new’ is newborn? And what is a neonate, apart from obviously being a newborn baby? The complications of early life are much easier to comprehend when some definitions are understood (see Boxes 17.1 and 17.2). In general, we define babies in terms of the length of their gestation and their birth weight, and the events which may happen to them in terms of the times at which they occur (e.g. the first week, the first month, the first year).
