Kangaroo Mother Care
by Patty Brennan
In the Spring of 2006, I attended a Networking Conference for Community-Based Doula Programs in Chicago Illinois. The conference began with a dynamic presentation on “Kangaroo Mother Care” by Susan Ludington. Dr. Ludington is the author of two books, How to Have a Smarter Baby and Kangaroo Care: The Best You Can Do For Your Preterm Baby. Dr. Ludington’s research on KMC, which has taken her to a number of countries worldwide, has produced a solid evidence base for this practice. The basics of KMC involve removing premature babies from incubators and placing them skin-to-skin, nestled between mother’s breasts. A blanket is used on the baby’s backside to keep her warm or the baby can be tucked inside the mother’s shirt. Even babies with feeding tubes or other medical equipment can receive KMC.
The benefits of KMC include: superior regulation of the baby’s temperature, heart rate, and respirations, a lowering of infection rates, and improved brain maturation. Her research has demonstrated that brain maturation is promoted when the baby is in a deep sleep, a state rarely achieved in the incubator, but consistently experienced with KMC (not a bad idea for full-term babies either!). When KMC was first introduced in Bogotá, Columbia, the infant mortality rate dropped 70% in the first year. Researchers attributed lower infection rates to the fact that maternal antibodies were passed to the baby via the skin. If the baby is cold when placed in KMC, the mother’s body temperature will shoot up rapidly to warm the baby. Once the baby’s temperature normalizes, the mother’s body temperature will return to normal in order to stabilize the baby’s temperature. Furthermore, researchers discovered that each breast is capable of independently regulating body temperature so that, for example, a mother of twins might have different temperatures on different sides of her body, depending upon each baby’s needs. Dual climate control!
Interestingly, dads who participated in KMC were also found to have an internal regulating system – they got restless (humorously referred to as “butt fatigue”) coincident with the baby’s temperature normalizing (often after about 1½ hours of KMC). If KMC was continued at this point, the babies overheated since dads apparently do not have the same capacity to stabilize the baby’s temperature over time.
Additional benefits noted were that babies in KMC do not cry and that there is a zero incidence of SIDS. All in all, fascinating work.