Brytt in the NICU

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Skin to Skin

From that first hold we jumped right into skin to skin, also known as Kangaroo Care. The research on this is amazing http://www.prematurity.org/baby/kangaroo.html. Skin to skin is when you strip the baby down to just a diaper and place them on your chest inside your shirt and just hold them for hours. The link above list all the wonderful benefits on it. Once we were given the okay to do skin to skin we set up a schedule. Everyday Brytt got skin to skin with someone in our family for a minimum of 1 hour twice a day. Usually Robin or I would be there Sundays which were his days off from work. Then we would go back home and my mom would do Monday and Tuesday days, my mother in law or aunt would do Monday nights. I would come back and do Tuesday nights, Wednesday & Thursday afternoon and night then go home Friday and my mom, mother in law, aunts or cousins would take care of her until we got back on Sunday and started it over again. I loved doing the nights because it was so quiet in the NICU and I would hold her from shift change at 8:00pm until 2 or 3 in the morning.