Kangaroo Care

Prior to the girls being removed from NICU, we had been doing kangaroo care. For those that do not know what this is, it is where the parents take off their shirt and hold the baby skin to skin. This is very helpful for premature infants because it helps their body to learn how to hold their temperature, can calm a baby, provide comfort, and help their digestive system. For the mothers of premature infants, it helps their milk come in, and provides reassurance that their baby really is OK. This program has proven to help reduce the preemie death rate drastically, and is being used in several underdeveloped countries that do not have the health care that the US has.

What was strange about our kangaroo sessions is that I have twins, and that Gary actually participated. To many, this would not seem strange, but while we doing this, we found out that many fathers did not do this for their children, on the moms. I found this odd, but when the nurse told me that many times dads are afraid to hold their children in fear that they would hurt them, it started to make sense. I took pictures of both of us kangarooing our children. Here they are:

The blanket is used to keep the baby warm in all areas that are not touching skin. This is Alyssa kangarooing with her dad. The strange part of this picture, is this is not the typical kangaroo hold. The typical hold would be to put the baby on your chest, but while she was in NICU, she would get fussy if we tried this, so we had to modify to help her get the most from it.

All of our pictures are of Alyssa being kangarooed. We could not hold Sierra for several days. She was very sensitive to touch and it would cause her to panic. To be able to get her stable, we could only touch her and not hold. Things are better with her now. I was holding her in the kangaroo position and she actually started to "root". This is very encouraging for me that she was because it means that she was looking for my breast to nurse. Considering that she is not very interested in the bottle, I was very pleased that she seemed to want to try to nurse. I can not start trying until I get approval from the doctor, but I am going to talk to him today and see what he says. Hopefully he will let me start soon, pumping sucks!