This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
In Ghaziabad, a bustling part of the Delhi National Capital Region, doctors at a government hospital despairingly watch a newborn fight to breathe. The infant needs specialized treatment that the facility cannot provide, but its chances of surviving the journey to another hospital are dim. As a last resort, the doctors strap the baby to the father’s chest, breathing tube and all, and in that womb-like position, send them to a critical care facility about 30 minutes away. Against all medical odds, the infant survives the journey, a testament to the healing and restorative power of the human touch.
The Ghaziabad baby is not alone: The world over, thousands of babies are adjusting to life outside the womb not in incubators in hospital nurseries, but on the warm chests of their parents (or other caregivers). This is kangaroo mother care, modern medicine’s latest protocol for babies born prematurely or underweight — and a long-standing traditional midwifery practice. It derives its fetching name from female kangaroos who keep their infants warm and stable in a pouch on their bodies, and essentially entails keeping the infant skin-to-skin with the mother or caregiver after birth as well as breastfeeding. This immediate skin contact provides warmth and protection from infections while also aiding stress relief and emotional bonding.
Globally, one in every 10 babies is born prematurely, arriving before completing 37 full weeks of gestation, which elevates the risk of severe and persistent illnesses, disabilities and developmental delays and even threatens their survival. An estimated one in five babies exhibit low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams or 5.5 pounds). With minimal body fat, such infants are often not able to breathe on their own, gain weight or regulate their own body temperature.
“As soon as they’re born, such babies need to be protected from infections, exclusively breastfed, given gentle breathing support and kept warm, to improve their odds of survival,” says Delhi-based Harish Chellani, neonatologist and researcher. Traditionally, midwives would place the newborn on the mother’s chest immediately after birth to achieve this, but 20th-century medicine placed its faith on a machine that simulates the womb: the incubator. Incubators gained currency in the early 20th century, believe it or not, as displays at the Coney Island amusement park in New York City. Visitors could peer through a glass front to see doctors and nurses caring for premature infants in peculiar metal incubators that simulated the womb. The exhibit’s popularity helped incubators go mainstream and eventually become accepted as essential medical care for premature babies.
In 2017, Chellani, along with medical researchers in five tertiary care hospitals in Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania, began studying whether kangaroo mother care (KMC) could be used for every preterm baby, whether stable (broadly speaking, those able to breathe, feed and regulate their body temperature on their own) or not. They randomly assigned unstable newborns with a birth weight between 1 and 1.799 kilograms to two groups. Group 1 received immediate KMC, where the mother or caregiver provided up to 17 hours of skin-to-skin contact per day in a mother-newborn ICU. Group 2 received conventional care in an incubator or warmer until the baby’s condition stabilized, followed by KMC.
