Kangaroo Care and Premature Babies

Kangaroo Care and Premature Babies

Kangaroo care entails holding a full term infant or premature so that there is a skin-to-skin contact between the newborn and the individual holding it. Individuals practice kangaroo care for premature infants for approximately two to three hours every day over a certain period. This takes place during early infancy, and the parent holds the baby against her bare chest. Medically stable babies can receive kangaroo care for up to any period since there is no maximum duration for them (Feldman et al., 2002).

Most parents may keep their babies in their arms for hours each day. According to research carried out, kangaroo care is essential as close bodily contact between the infant and the mother helps to stabilize the heartbeat, breathing and temperature of the premature infant. This is crucial as premature babies always have problems in harmonizing their heart and breathing rate. Mothers who exercise kangaroo care have an easy time breastfeeding as it improves their milk supply. This care enables the babies to experience long hours of sleep, decrease their crying, practice long alertness periods, gain weight and gets discharged early from the hospital (Tallandin & Scalembra, 2006).

Doctors use Kangaroo Maternal care contact in order to restore the unique bond between the mother and the infant following the impulsive separation during birth particularly in premature births. Kangaroo care consists of exclusive breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact and support for a mother-infant pair. A premature baby lacks various needs, which aids in, its growth. These needs may include the nurturing environment that the mother's womb gives the baby and protection from toxic substances that may harm the infant during its growth period. The other need is the benefits of motherly closeness that arise from the contact that the mother has with the child. Prematurity; therefore creates an exceptional phase in the life of an infant. A part of its prenatal development takes place in an environment outside the mother's womb and under different conditions that result from maternal separation (Aucott et al., 2002).

There has been research on effects of prematurity on the health, psychology and behavioural development of the infant. The research has also looked at the relations that exist between the interventions that individuals undertake during the neonatal period and the consequences of development. Studies on the long-term effects that result from interference of the infants' growth have shown that the infant may gain in its cognitive abilities. It also shows that there is a global increase in the maternal sensitivity. There have also been a number of studies on the effects of the skin contact between mother and infant during the neonatal period on skills, which are self-regulatory in premature babies. The studies were on the consequences of such contacts on the infant's ability to regulate wake and sleep, manage behaviour and maintain an effortless exploration of its surroundings (Tallandin & Scalembra, 2006).

In addition, the capability of the infant to handle negative emotions, the way it coordinates attention between the mother and any object and how it modulates an arousal were part of the study. The skin-to-skin contact can modify each of the undesirable conditions that arise due to prematurity state of the infant. These conditions are the excess maternal separation loads that arise from routine nursery care, exposure to pain and deprivation of the sensory due to a limited maternal and tactile contact during the incubation phase. Skin-to-skin contact would promote the organisation of the infant's psychology and behaviour as shown in the prime of the maturity state of organisation and developed emotion regulation, joint engagement and explanatory skills during the first year. Tactile stimulation during the prenatal period is necessary to infants as it improves the state of organisation, attention, response to stress and aids in psychological maturation.

When a mother places the infant in direct skin-to-skin contact, she restores closeness of the infant thus ensuring psychological and physiological bonding and warmth. The kangaroo position provides an all set access to nourishment as it enables the body of the mother to act directly in response to the infants needs. These helps to control the infant's temperature more easily than when it is in an incubator. The mother's milk responds to the immunological and nutritional needs of the fragile infant and this enables it to sleep soundly. Kangaroo care also improves the survival rates of the low birth weight and premature infants. This is due to its ability to lower the risk of nosocomial infections, lower respiratory tract diseases and severe illnesses.

KMC employs the components of kangaroo care that enables it sustain and monitor the growth of the infant. Kangaroo mother care associates with developmental care intervention, and Als introduces part of the skin-to-skin care as an element of NIDCAP. The post neonatal intensive care periods are always stages of hampering the normal mother to child interaction period. This is since it forms a barrier to touching and caring for the infant. The Bogota's KMC programme shortens this period and allows the mother to play an active role just like developmental care programmes. These programmes offer a protective effect on the infants with low birth weight and neurodevelopment delay thus promotes the infants cognitive development. The first component is the interference timing that starts early in the hospital immediately there is stabilisation of the psychological state of the infant. The rationale behind this early start is that infants are in need of qualitative compensation due to the loss of intrauterine occurrences and prevention of overload input (Tessier et al., 2003).

The other vital component that KMC employees is the kangaroo position which leads to associations of the sensory modalities such as auditory stimulations that occurs through the mother's voice, tactile stimulations through the permanent skin-to-skin contacts and olfactive stimulations through the mother's body closeness. The other modalities include vestibular-kinesthetic stimulations that result from the infant's location on the mother's chest and visual stimulation since the parent places the infant in an upright position that enables him to see its mothers face, body, and the relative elements as the mother move about in her regular activities. The use of this position is essential as multimodal sensory motivation programmes have a short-term effect on both the mental and physical maturation (Tessier et al., 2003).