Babies benefit from “kangaroo care” years later

Neonatologists like Dr. Robert White aren’t surprised by studies that reveal the benefits of skin-to-skin contact between premature babies and their parents.

He has witnessed the benefits of kangaroo care firsthand, again and again.

“We’ve been encouraging kangaroo care for at least 10 years,” said Dr. White, medical director of the NICU at Memorial Children’s Hospital. “Our staff has seen that it is safe, they have seen the joy that it gives parents, and they have seen very premature, fragile babies who received lots of skin-to-skin contact turn out very well.”

The most recent report published in the December issue of Pediatrics was actually a long-term follow-up. A team of Colombian researchers found that the positive effects of kangaroo care for those young infants were still present 20 years later.

Upon reevaluation, the participants, now young adults, exhibited less aggressive drive and were less impulsive and hyperactive than the preterm babies who received traditional care, according to the report. The babies who received more skin-to-skin contact also exhibited less antisocial behavior, which could be associated with separation from the mother at birth.

Kangaroo care also motivated families to become more child-oriented, the team found.

“(Kangaroo care) clearly make the world a better place for babies and families,” the study said. “We hypothesize that the results would be even more significant if kangaroo care was introduced as soon as the infant could tolerate it, even in ICUs.”

Dr. White said the new home for Memorial Children’s Hospital will help foster kangaroo care by making it much easier for NICU families to stay with their babies for extended periods.

The new NICU will be very unique in that it will not separate the mother from the baby even in the first few days of life, which is probably the most crucial stage of development, Dr. White said. Memorial Children’s Hospital remains on target to open in March.

“All of our units in the past have had space only for babies and not their mothers until they were discharged,” Dr. White said. “Previous research has shown that providing private rooms increases the likelihood that families will stay and use that time to hold their babies more.”