'Kangaroo Care' has multiple benefits for mother and baby
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Melissa Bungar and her newborn daughter are practicing a nurturing concept known as "kangaroo care," which emphasizes skin contact between mother and child. -
Melissa Bungar and daughter Eden bond through skin-to-skin contact.
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When Melissa Bungar gave birth to her third child, her mother's instinct told her it was natural to occasionally hold infant Chloe nestled against her bare chest skin-to-skin.
"There they are in diapers and they're so little, you just want to squish them," said Mrs. Bungar, of Perry Township, Lawrence County. "My husband thought I was crazy. It just felt like the right thing to do."
Four years later, when Mrs. Bungar checked into Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC to deliver her fourth child -- Eden, on March 2 -- a form she filled out asked her if she wanted to do "kangaroo care." A nurse explained it was skin-to-skin care and talked about the benefits. Mrs. Bungar wrote yes on the form.
"It sounded real peaceful for me," she said. "There's a lot of chaos sometimes after a baby is born. It sounded like a nice focal point."
It also seemed to her that it was the same thing she had done with Chloe; "I just never called it kangaroo care."
It's also called "kangaroo mother care" and "kangaroo mother intervention," and the concept has its roots in a poor hospital in Colombia, South America. According to published accounts, Dr. Edgar Rey, chief of the pediatrics department, came up with the idea in 1978 to ease shortages of doctors, nurses, and incubators in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Mother and Child Institute in Bogota.
The idea was that a mother's body temperature could take the place of the incubator -- just like a mother kangaroo nurtures her baby in her pouch -- while enhancing mother-to-baby bonding. Holding the baby skin-to-skin in an upright or near-upright position around the clock also would encourage successful breast-feeding and allow early discharge of stable babies regardless of weight or gestational age.
The three components of kangaroo care have been adapted as the concept has spread to both developing and high-tech nations in the years since.
First Published March 28, 2011 12:00 am
