For families

The Theirworld Edinburgh Birth Cohort research team and funders are excited about the potential this study has to improve the lives of babies born early, and their families. We hope you will be, too.

Recruitment to the study is now closed. We recruited babies who were born early and also a group of full-term babies, born close to their due date. Here you can find out more about who was eligible to sign-up for the study.

During the study we are hoping your family will take part in a number of different appointments as your baby gets older.  We are grateful to you for your contribution to science and understanding and we will do our best to make your experience interesting and fun.

FAQ's

Your first experiences in our study will usually happen after your baby is born but, whenever possible, we are also going to try to work with pregnant women and their partners to gather valuable ante-natal information.

A few months after birth we will check in with families and collect some information about the baby’s early development and a little about the parents and home environment. This information will be collected by asking you to complete a questionnaire pack which will be sent to your home or completed online. A parent will be asked to fill out the questionnaires and return them to our researcher. This will also give us a chance to introduce you to our researcher who you will meet at the next appointment when your baby is 9 months old.

This page runs through the basic information parents might need to know before attending their baby’s 9 month TEBC appointment.

This visit will be very similar to the previous visit which took place when your baby was 9 months old. It will give us a chance to see how your baby has progressed since their last visit by repeating some of the things we did the last time.

This visit will be very similar to the previous visit which took place when your baby was 9 months old. It will give us a chance to see how your baby has progressed since their last visit by repeating some of the things we did the last time.

This visit will be similar to earlier visits; your child will be asked to play games, answer questions, and complete a brain scan.