Skin-to-Skin Contact may be Better for Premature Infants than Incubators: Study

For premature babies, doctors and mothers alike know that these little tots require extra care upon their entrance into the world. In the United States alone, it's estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that 1 in every 8 babies will be born prematurely each year-with preterm births defined as those born at 37 weeks or less. (A full term is defined as 40 weeks, typically.)

Yet as care for premature infants usually involve the use of incubators, a recent study shows that in some cases, skin-to-skin contact from mothers may be more beneficial .

"In this decade-long study, we show for the first time that providing maternal-newborn skin-to-skin contact to premature infants in the neonatal period improves children's functioning ten years later in system shown to be sensitive to early maternal deprivation in animal research," lead study author Dr. Ruth Feldman, a professor at Bar-Ilan University notes, via Science Daily.

This recent study looks at an intervention method known as "Kangaroo Care." It was developed in order to prevent premature babies from developing hypothermia in places where there were not enough incubators available.

For the study, researchers examined 73 mothers who were asked to provide skin-to-skin contact with their premature child in the neonatal unit for one hour daily over 14 consecutive days. These infants were then compared to those that received the standard incubator care.

After the children turned 10, those who received maternal contact as babies exhibited more organized sleep and better neuroendocrine responses to sleep. The study also showed that the children who had direct contact with their mothers demonstrated more mature functioning regarding their autonomic nervous system and better cognitive control.

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Biological Psychiatry.