'Kangaroo mother care' - how mothers can help premature babies to health with a simple cuddle

Healing power: Skin contact with mother can speed up a baby's recovery

Cuddling up against a mother's bare skin can help tiny premature babies recover more quickly from the pain of being stuck with needles and other procedures, Canadian researchers have found.

Babies held tightly against their mother's skin - in a position dubbed "kangaroo mother care" - squirmed and grimaced less than babies swaddled in blankets, the researchers say.

"Skin-to-skin contact by the mother, referred to as kangaroo mother care, has been shown to be efficacious in reducing pain in three previous studies," said co-author Celeste Johnston of Montreal's McGill University School of Nursing in an article published yesterday in the journal BioMed Central Pediatrics.

But those studies involved older babies. Her team tested 61 premature babies born between 28 and 31 weeks.

Babies born so early spend weeks in neonatal intensive care units and are often subjected to painful medical procedures.

Parents and nurses alike find this ordeal one of the most distressing things about having an infant in the unit, the researchers said.

Ms Johnston's team assigned half the newborns to "kangaroo mother care" and half to the usual condition of being swaddled in an incubator.

"In the experimental condition, the infant was held in kangaroo mother care for 15 minutes prior to and throughout heel lance procedure," they wrote.

They measured the babies' responses using the "premature infant pain profile", which measures grimacing, maximum heart rate and blood oxygen saturation levels.

"The pain response appears to be reduced by skin-to-skin maternal contact," Ms Johnston said yesterday.

"This response is not as powerful as it is in older pre-term babies, but the shorter recovery time using [kangaroo mother care] is important in helping maintain the baby's health."

The study shows the cuddled babies had recovered from the pain in about a minute and a half, while the incubator babies were still suffering more than three minutes after the procedure.

This delay could make a significant difference to the health of a very preterm baby, they said.