A new Israeli study demonstrates that skin-to-skin contact with premature infants, long known to be beneficial, has a positive long-term impact as well.

‘Kangaroo care’ is the term given to the practice of using the mother’s body heat to prevent hypothermia in preemies through direct contact.  Named for the marsupial which carries its underdeveloped young in a pouch, it was introduced by neonatologist Edgar Rey Sanabria in 1978 in Bogota, Colombia — where access to incubators was limited.

The recent study was conducted by Dr. Ruth Feldman, a professor in the department of psychology and in the Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, and adjunct professor at the Child Study Center at Yale.

Between 1996 and 1998, 73 preemies were given standard care in an incubator, while 73 others were given ‘kangaroo care’ by parents for an hour a day for two consecutive weeks.  The control group was not informed of the study, but was offered ongoing psychological and medical care.

Then, seven times over the next ten years, all 146 infants, now aged 16-18, underwent brain scans.

“What we found was that the children in the kangaroo-care group had better cognitive skills, sleep patterns and a higher functioning autonomic nervous system, better able to cope with stress,” Feldman told ISRAEL21c. “And their mothers were more sensitive parents.”

Although any adult would have been able to provide the requisite skin-to-skin contact, Feldman says it was primarily the mothers in the study who did it.  “When we told parents involved in the kangaroo-care group that one of them would have to commit to being with the baby [in the neonatal department] every day for two weeks, it turned out to be the mothers who were better able to schedule it,” she explained.  She stressed that all study participants were warm and loving parents.

It is the direct contact that offers the benefits seen in the study.  “There is a physiological response from skin to skin that is absent with fabric,” she says. “And it is the only way to guarantee thermoregulation — keeping a baby warm outside of the incubator.”

The mothers in the kangaroo group also reported a deeper and more connected relationship with their children.  “And statistically, these mothers end up breastfeeding their babies longer than other mothers,” Feldman said.

In response to the concern that preemies are at greater risk of infection and that removing them from their incubators increases their exposure, Feldman says she believes the benefits outweigh those risks.  “All that is required is taking the usual precautions when handling such infants.”

About 12% of all births in the Western world are premature, defined as delivery more than three weeks prior to term.