Skin-to-skin care helps newborn babies in many ways – brain development, regulating heart rate and body temperature, and bonding with their caregivers.
When a baby needs to be in the NICU, skin-to-skin care is especially important, but there can be challenges.
The team at Regional One Health’s Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center is helping address that through an innovative use of existing equipment that helps facilitate skin-to-skin care.
After a baby is born, skin-to-skin contact is a powerful tool to bond with your baby, improve their brain development, and help them regulate their heart rate and body temperature. But when a baby needs to be in the NICU, skin-to-skin care can be more challenging.
“After a routine delivery, moms are encouraged to have skin-to-skin care right away,” said Ajay Talati, MD, medical director at Regional One Health’s Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center. “If the baby has to go straight to the NICU for treatment, that can’t happen.”
Challenges can remain once a baby is in the NICU, said Kelley Smith, NICU Nursing Manager. If a baby is on an oscillator, a mechanical ventilation device used to help premature or ill infants breathe, they are connected to tubing that has to stay at the same level as their incubator.
“With an oscillator, the tubing is very stiff – it can’t be bent,” Smith explained. “That makes it hard to move the baby into the parents’ arms for skin-to-skin care.”
The NICU team started looking for a solution and found it in an innovative new use for a piece of equipment that is commonly found in other parts of the hospital.
Cardiac chairs are typically used to help cardiac and stroke patients rest in an optimal position. Because the chairs can go up and down, recline, and even lay flat, Smith and Assistant Nursing Manager Heather Burgess saw an opening to use them in the NICU for skin-to-skin care.
“With this chair, we can have the mom or dad sit in the chair and raise the chair to the level of the oscillator’s tubing,” Smith said. “It makes it easier to get the baby out of the incubator.”
Skin-to-skin care helps babies in a number of ways. “After a routine delivery, moms are encouraged to have skin-to-skin care right away,” said Ajay Talati, MD, medical director at Regional One Health’s Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center.
A generous Regional One Health Foundation supporter stepped up to donate a cardiac chair to the NICU, and the nursing team is now educating patients about its use and making it available to all families that can benefit. Along with families whose baby is on an oscillator, moms who have had a C-section are finding the chair useful.
“Many moms can’t sit upright for 12 to 24 hours after a C-section, and it can be uncomfortable trying to get in and out of a chair,” Dr. Talati said. “We use it whenever a mom or baby needs it. It’s great for when a baby is too sick to be lowered or when a mom has pain after a C-section.”
Burgess said finding a solution was important to the NICU team because skin-to-skin care has many proven medical benefits for babies and moms.
For the baby, skin-to-skin care helps regulate body temperature, breathing and heart rate and improves brain development, Burgess said. For moms, skin-to-skin can help improve breastmilk production, regulate postpartum hormone balance, and reduce anxiety and stress.
There’s also the matter of bonding, which applies not only to new moms, but to all caregivers.
“We encourage parents to do skin-to-skin care in the first week of their baby’s life, especially for very small, very sick babies,” Smith said. “When you have a baby in the NICU, you’re anxious and afraid, so sometimes parents wait until they go home. That can be a missed opportunity for bonding. The sooner we start skin-to-skin, the better off the family unit will be.”
Dr. Talati, Smith and Burgess have seen the value of skin-to-skin care on multiple occasions.
Moms, dads and other caregivers can all take part in skin-to-skin care. “We encourage parents to do skin-to-skin care in the first week of their baby’s life, especially for very small, very sick babies,” NICU Nursing Manager Kelley Smith said.
The first mom to use the chair had impressive results. “Her baby came off the oscillator the next day!” Smith said. “It’s amazing to see. We’ll have babies on an oscillator with an oxygen saturation in the low 90s…then they do skin-to-skin and it shoots up to 100!”
Burgess said another mom provided skin-to-skin care in the NICU every day, and it contributed to her baby getting healthy enough to go home much sooner than originally expected.
Dr. Talati said there is plenty of evidence behind those individual experiences. Factors like better milk production and better feeding, the ability to regulate body temperature and heart rate, and increased oxygen saturation can all help a baby get stronger.
“It’s a lot of little things that can add up to the baby making faster progress toward going home,” he said. “We hope it can speed that up and we can help more babies go home sooner.”