Preemie parenting, kangaroo-style

Premature babies gain lasting cognitive benefits from skin-to-skin cuddling with a parent, according to a Stanford Medicine study.

The more skin-to-skin contact preemies received while hospitalized as newborns, the less likely they were to be developmentally delayed at a year old, the study reported.

The findings were published in July 2024 in The Journal of Pediatrics.

The intervention, known as kangaroo care, is simple. But because hospitalized preemies are small and fragile, and often hooked to lots of tubes and wires, holding the baby can seem complicated. Parents may need help from their baby’s medical team to get set up. That effort is worth it, the study showed.

Small increases in the amount of skin-to-skin care were linked to large differences in 12-month neurodevelopmental scores. An average of 20 minutes more per day of skin-to-skin care was associated with a 10-point increase on the scoring scale used for neurodevelopment. A score of 100 indicates mid-average functioning; a score of 70 or less suggests significant developmental delays..

“Ultimately, we want our patients to be healthy kids who can achieve the same milestones as if they didn’t come to the NICU,” said study co-author Melissa Scala, MD, clinical professor of pediatrics, referring to the neonatal intensive care unit. Scala is a neonatologist who cares for preemies at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

“Our finding legitimizes skin-to-skin care as a vital intervention in the neonatal intensive care unit to support our goal of getting that child out of the hospital, able to learn and develop,” Scala said.

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