hiddenstash:unicef:Photo of the Week: Phillip holds his newborn son at a hospital in Ghana. He and h
hiddenstash:unicef:Photo of the Week: Phillip holds his newborn son at a hospital in Ghana. He and his wife Gloria are using ‘kangaroo care’, where parents without access to incubators hold newborns constantly against their skin to keep them warm. Close body contact helps stabilize babies’ body temperatures, steady their heart rates and help their breathing. © UNICEF/GHAA2015-04031/Quarmyne The medical benefits of skin-to-skin holding for preemies were discovered quite by chance in the early 1980s by two neonatologists in Bogota, Columbia.Because their hospitals couldn’t afford enough modern high-tech isolettes for preemies, they used what they had to hold and warm tiny babies - the babies’ mothers, a low-tech but high-touch solution. The premature baby was placed skin-to-skin on Mother’s chest, between her breasts. A cloth wrapped around Mother’s body held baby there (originally this custom was dubbed “packing”). The mothers were instructed to hold their infants twenty-four hours a day, sleep with them, and let the baby suckle from the breast. Babies were given oxygen while nestled on mother’s chest. Dramatic improvements occurred in the “kangarooed” preemies. Not only did more preemie babies survive, but they thrived better: infants gained weight faster and left the hospital sooner. It took an experiment of necessity in poor hospitals in South America to demonstrate how important parental care is to premature infants.Gradually, kangaroo care has become more popular, and researchers have learned that it provides substantial benefits for babies, even in the high-tech hospitals of Europe and North America.- The Premature Baby Book (Sears Parenting Library) -- source link