 News
25th April 2008
Mothers' cuddles
help ease babies' painCuddling up against a mother's bare skin
can help tiny premature babies recover more quickly from the pain of being stuck
with needles and other procedures, Canadian researchers have found. Babies
held tightly against their mother's skin - in a position dubbed "kangaroo mother
care" - squirmed and grimaced less than babies swaddled in blankets, the researchers
say. "Skin-to-skin contact by the mother, referred to as kangaroo mother
care, has been shown to be efficacious in reducing pain in three previous studies,"
said co-author Celeste Johnston of Montreal's McGill University School of Nursing
in an article published yesterday in the journal BioMed Central Pediatrics. But
those studies involved older babies. Her team tested 61 premature babies born
between 28 and 31 weeks. Babies born so early spend weeks in neonatal intensive
care units and are often subjected to painful medical procedures. Parents
and nurses alike find this ordeal one of the most distressing things about having
an infant in the unit, the researchers said. Ms Johnston's team assigned half
the newborns to "kangaroo mother care" and half to the usual condition of being
swaddled in an incubator. "In the experimental condition, the infant was
held in kangaroo mother care for 15 minutes prior to and throughout heel lance
procedure," they wrote. They measured the babies' responses using the "premature
infant pain profile", which measures grimacing, maximum heart rate and blood oxygen
saturation levels. "The pain response … appears to be reduced by skin-to-skin
maternal contact," Ms Johnston said yesterday. "This response is not as
powerful as it is in older pre-term babies, but the shorter recovery time using
[kangaroo mother care] is important in helping maintain the baby's health." The
study shows the cuddled babies had recovered from the pain in about a minute and
a half, while the incubator babies were still suffering more than three minutes
after the procedure. This delay could make a significant difference to
the health of a very preterm baby, they said. Where to next?
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