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Premature Babies A wonderful benefit of modern medicine and technology is that many premature babies who would have been lost not many years ago are saved today. A “preemie” as small as 1-½ pounds is helped to breath and stay warm until they are strong enough to survive without artificial support. A tool that is routinely used is the incubator. In an incubator the baby’s temperature is kept at a near optimum level and the environment is more oxygenated than our world’s atmosphere, which is necessary for the baby’s yet to be fully developed lungs.
Though the incubator is necessary to sustain the baby’s life, it does have some drawbacks. The baby’s frail condition does not allow it to be continually held, carried, stimulated and breastfed in a manner where physical and psychological growth are maximized. It is deprived of the many benefits that constant human contact affords.
The method that is most successful in helping to overcome this disadvantage of the incubator is Kangaroo Carry. When the parents “Kangaroo” their preemie, they are holding their baby skin-to-skin up against their chest. This reduces the stress that is suffered by the frail infant when in the impersonal and “dead” confines of an incubator. Many studies have verified that this early touching enormously increases the probability of the babies survival, calms a baby, produces healthy chemicals in the baby’s system, builds up the immune system, accelerates growth rate and even influences increased mental acuity later in life. Studies have shown that Kangaroo Carry can often stabilize the baby’s breathing, heart rate and core body temperature better than an incubator.
An Over the Shoulder Baby Holder baby sling can be used to hold the baby in the “Kangaroo” position. Best results are obtained when the baby is put in the center of the chest in an upright position and the sling is drawn up tight. If heart, breathing and temperature monitors are attached to the baby, their readings show that the baby begins to better synchronize with the bearer—for example, a racing heart comes more quickly into a normal range. In many third world countries, Kangaroo Carry has replaced the attempt to introduce incubators because of the more positive outcomes of kangaroo carry.
It is interesting to note that we humans, as
placental mammals, naturally grow our babies to term in the placenta, birth
the baby, and then carry them naturally on our bodies in our arms, or a
sling (or, in some of our crazy cultures babies are often carried in devices
that detach the baby from the direct physical contact of their parents due
to [1] marketing, [2] fashion and [3] “convenience”). But, when we birth a
premature baby, we use the sling to Kangaroo Carry as an adjunct or
replacement for the incubator to become “more like a marsupial mammal”.
Some time back, we had a fascinating and humorous spin on the Kangaroo Carry. We received some correspondence and photos from a group of zoologists working with kangaroos in Australia. With orphan baby kangaroos (or “joeys” as they are called in the land down under), our scientist friends carry the orphan kangaroos in the Over the Shoulder Baby Holder baby slings until they are able to survive and thrive on their own. The joeys enjoy being carried like we humans carry our offspring. They love riding along in the sling with their adopted parents; they are at home in their womb with a view.
The joeys are affectionate, inquisitive, and playful and just naturally assume that the scientists are their parents. Because they are raised “attached” to their adoptive parents, much of the stress of being orphaned is relieved, and they can go on to live healthy and happy lives when they “naturally” reach the age of independence. Sometimes we imagine scientists to be detached emotionally from their experiments. Not so in this case, just the opposite. The closeness does its work; scientists and joeys develop deep emotional bonds with each other, and both are the better for it. For these scientists, their work is a labor of love. Bill Devin |
