The method, called Kangaroo Care, was so named because of how it resembles marsupial caregiving: A mother snuggles her baby, upright, against her bare chest for long periods of time. The doctors developed the program in 1. Instituto Materno Infantil at San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogota.
Mantenha o foco no seu neg. They are more gentle and trusting, more innocent. This large maternity hospital was overcrowded and understaffed and underfunded: In the special baby care unit, several babies would often share the same incubator. Infection rates were sky- high, as were abandonment rates and death rates. To improve this dire situation, doctors Edgar Rey and Hector Martinez launched a program to get babies out of the hospital . They advised mothers to keep their baby on their chest for warmth, and to exclusively breast feed. Rey and Martinez reported mortality rates of the 5. Nearly 9. 0 percent of babies between 1,0. And the number of babies abandoned dropped by two- thirds. These results never appeared in a medical journal, and they are somewhat inflated because they didn’t include deaths of babies who died in the first few days of life. Nevertheless, this very appealing idea. Many doctors were skeptical that Kangarooing would provide much benefit in rich countries, beyond making moms and dads feel better about the experience. As two British doctors wrote in a Lancet. In 2. 01. 1, the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration published a comprehensive review of all of the major studies to date, and seemed to confirm what Rey and Martinez had originally claimed: In resource- limited settings, Kangaroo Care significantly lowers the risk of infection, hypothermia, and death. It also increases a baby’s weight and head circumference, and the strength of the maternal bond. It’s unclear, though, whether the method’s positive effects last through a baby’s adolescence, nor whether it offers much for premature babies in developed countries. I write this protracted introduction as a caveat to two new papers reporting that, in Colombia and Israel, respectively, the positive effects of Kangaroo Care can last for more than a decade after a baby’s birth. The studies are fascinating to me because they’re suggesting that a mother’s touch can exert a powerful influence on her child’s brain development (wow! But it’s also possible, given the spotty data, that the positive effects aren’t coming from her touch, per se. So, with caveat said, on to the new studies. The first was done by a group of Colombian and Canadian researchers who have been advocating for Kangaroo Care since the beginning. They measured brain activity of 4. Colombia: 3. 9 born very prematurely and 9 born at term. Of the premature group, 2. Kangaroo Care and 1. The researchers used transcranial magnetic stimulation. The wand contains a magnetic coil, which produces an electromagnetic pulse that passes through the person. The neurons respond to that pulse, and the researchers then measure that neuronal response via EEG electrodes placed all over the scalp. In this case, the researchers placed the wand over participants’ motor cortex, on the center of the top of the head, which is involved in motor planning. In contrast, the kids born prematurely who had had standard hospital care showed a slower synchronization of brain activity. The second study, based at a hospital in Israel, also looked at adolescents who had been born too early: 7. Kangaroo Care and 7. For example, early physical contact with mom affects the expression of genes related to stress hormones and social behavior in the baby animal’s brain. Conversely, depriving an infant rodent (or infant human, for that matter) of its mother leads to all sorts of behavioral and medical problems for the rest of the animal’s life. As a mother touches and influences her baby, so too does the baby touch and influence her mother. It’s the constant, back- and- forth interaction that creates the bond, and the bond that keeps a mother invested in her child’s success for many years to come.
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December 2016
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