What could be more touching?
Skin-to-skin contact is popular in Scandinavia. It is used as an incubation alternative for small premature babies. Human contact is thought to help these weaklings get back on their feet better than complete isolation in a soulless device.
Particularly touching is this photo of a boy helping his father establish skin-to-skin contact with his premature brothers.
The photo was taken in 2016 in Copenhagen (Denmark). Kangaroo care is another name for skin-to-skin contact.
The basis of the technique is the placement of infants on the exposed chest of the mother or father every day for a period of between a few minutes and several hours.
Babies who use it quickly acclimate to their environment, improve cognitively and gain weight.
The “kangaroo” method introduces the baby to the outside world very gently and naturally. It gives the effect of a gentle simulation of all the senses in the child.
The child feels the blows, touches, hears the heartbeat and the mother’s voice, smells the smell of breast milk and the mother’s body.
There is a stimulation of the sense of balance, of the sense of the position of the body in space and of movement.
Studies have shown that the condition of premature babies when using such contacts stabilizes much faster than in an incubator. And the level of mortality and complications in young children is reduced.
In one study, the survival rate of children weighing 1000-1500g increased by 30-70%.
