ShareThisWhen Melissa Bungar gave birth to her third child, her mother's instinct told her it was natural to occasionally nestle infant Chloe against her chest skin-to-skin.
"My husband thought I was crazy. It just felt like the right thing to do," Bungar said.
Four years later, when Bungar checked into Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh to deliver her fourth child -- Eden, on March 2 -- she filled out a form asking whether she wanted to do "kangaroo care." A nurse explained it was skin-to-skin care and talked about the benefits. Bungar wrote yes.
"It sounded real peaceful for me," she said. "There's a lot of chaos sometimes after a baby is born."
It also seemed to her that it was the same thing she had done with Chloe; "I just never called it kangaroo care."
Also called "kangaroo mother care" and "kangaroo mother intervention," the age-old concept's re-emergence has its roots in a poor hospital in Bogota, Colombia. In 1978, Dr. Edgar Rey, chief of pediatrics at the Mother and Child Institute, suggested it could ease the shortage of doctors, nurses and incubators in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Rey reasoned that a mother's body temperature could replace an incubator -- just like a mother kangaroo nurtures her baby in her pouch -- while enhancing mother-to-baby bonding. Holding the baby skin-to-skin in an upright or near-upright position around the clock also would encourage breast-feeding and allow early discharge of stable babies regardless of weight or gestational age.
In the years since, the concept has spread to both developing and high-tech nations.
At Magee, it was introduced to the neonatal intensive care unit in 1997 and expanded in the last few years to include full-term babies in the Womancare Birth Center and post-partum newborn care. It is available to nursing and bottle-feeding mothers. Dads have the option of providing kangaroo care, too.
Some earlier studies of its use abroad suggested kangaroo care of low-birth weight infants reduces severe illness, infection and breast-feeding problems; improves mother-baby bonding; and perhaps even saves lives. Other studies said there was not enough scientific evidence to declare skin-to-skin an effective alternative to standard care for low-birth weight infants.
But the American Academy of Pediatrics is pro-kangaroo care for stable premature infants in neonatal intensive care units.
"The surprising benefits of kangaroo care for the infant include warmth, stability of heartbeat and breathing, increased time spent in the deep sleep and quiet alert states, decreased crying, increased weight gain, and increased breast-feeding. These benefits are apparent even when kangaroo care occurs for only a few minutes each day," the academy says on its website.
The benefits are numerous, agreed Tammy Casper, a developmental specialist with a master's degree in nursing. She educates staff and families about kangaroo care in the neonatal intensive care ward at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. There, about 80 percent of the babies, including preemies and full-term infants, are eligible for skin-to-skin care. "The only reason it wouldn't be is if the baby is very ill or needing a surgery, if we're worrying about a wound," she said.
The concept has been in use at Cincinnati Children's for about 20 years, although it was used less frequently for a period of time until a push to reintegrate it during the past two years, she said.
"Intensive care is filled with lots of machines and technology," said Casper's fellow developmental specialist Linda Lacina. "Putting a baby on their parents' chest is not technology, so it's difficult for some people to wrap their minds around that this is such a good thing to do."
At Magee, Lynn Kramer, a registered nurse and certified lactation consultant, has been active the last couple years in implementing kangaroo care, first in the Womancare Birth Center and, more recently, where those mothers and babies go for post-partum newborn care.
She, too, finds multiple benefits:
-- Breast-feeding is more likely to be exclusive and of longer duration.
-- Even bottle-fed babies stabilize more quickly in terms of body temperature, heart rate and breathing. "When the baby is stressed and crying or cold, they use more blood sugar, which can cause complications post-delivery," Kramer said.
-- Both baby and mother are less stressed.
"Kangaroo care is an old concept that is new to Western civilization," she added.
"It's just a natural instinct of all mammals at birth to feed at the breast. With the advent of improved medical care and technology we fell away from skin-to-skin care. A mother's instinct is to reach for her baby when it is born." And the baby, she added, cries and becomes fretful when separated from mom.
(Contact Pohla Smith at psmith(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.)
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