Kangaroo care helps newborns adapt
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Last Updated: 2004-04-20 15:58:47 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Having skin-to-skin contact with mom immediately after birth may help to ease a newborn's arrival into the world, according to a new study.
Known as "kangaroo care," such skin-to-skin contact is believed to give babies a sense of security that provides a buffer against the bombardment of sensory stimuli around them.
The method was developed in Colombia as an alternative to placing premature, low-birth-weight newborns in an incubator. Research since then has suggested kangaroo care is not only safe for these tiny babies, but may also lead to less severe infections, encourage breast-feeding and aid in infant development.
The new study looked at whether skin-to-skin contact shortly after birth might also benefit healthy, full-term newborns. The researchers found that infants who were placed on their mothers' bare torso for one hour shortly after birth had better sleep and showed movements and postures that indicate greater adaptation to their surroundings.
The findings show that kangaroo care does seem to ease the transition from the womb to the outside world, study co-author Dr. Sari Goldstein Ferber of the University of Haifa in Israel told Reuters Health.
She and colleague Dr. Imad R. Makhoul of Rambam Medical Center report the findings in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The study included 47 healthy mother-baby pairs. Half of the newborns were brought to their mothers about 15 minutes after birth so that they could spend an hour lying skin to skin on their mothers, with their heads nuzzled near their mothers'. The other infants went to the nursery during this time.
Starting four hours after birth, all of the infants were observed for signs of adaptation. Ferber and Makhoul found that babies who received kangaroo care spent more time in restful sleep, and less time in "transitional, fussy, crying, and alert states."
These babies also showed more flexed movements and postures, and fewer extended ones -- curling in toward their center, rather than with their limbs and body outstretched. More flexed movements and postures are expected of a healthy newborn, and, Ferber explained, this flexion reflects "stability" in the central nervous system.
In contrast, she noted, extended limbs indicate that an infant is in unrest, and such movement may be seen in less mature and "stressed" babies.
As for why kangaroo care bestows its benefits, Ferber explained that the skin-to-skin contact provides infants with warmth and the sense that they not alone, but as close to their mother as possible. Though it was developed for preemies, the method is now being used in full-term infants, but not widely enough, according to the researcher.
"It seems like a good thing to do with all newborns," she said, "as long as the medical conditions allow."
SOURCE: Pediatrics, April 2004.
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