Forget the drugs – skin to skin works

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Skin-to-skin contact, or kangaroo mother care (KMC) has been shown to be efficacious in diminishing pain response to heel lance in full term and moderately preterm neonates,” write Celeste Johnston, DEd, RN, from McGill University School of Nursing in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and colleagues. An awful lot of money has gone towards demonstrating what we all know in our hearts. If you cuddle your baby when they are in pain, you reduce the pain. Kangaroo mother care is a fancy term for holding your premature baby a lot, in preference to putting her in an incubator. Attempts have been made to make incubators mimic mother’s care – by making them warm (but they aren’t as good at regulating baby’s temperature as holding is) by making them smell like mum (but not as effective as mum holding baby – obviously), and by making them move like mum (but not as effective as mum carrying baby). It wasn’t until there was no money for expensive incubators that hospitals in Brazil “tried” letting mums hold babies while they recovered from their premature birth. It soon became apparent that holding is more healthy and healing than incubators (in other words, fewer babies died). Another thumbs up for mother nature!

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Forget the drugs – skin to skin works