A moving photo of a boy and his father snuggling with premature newborn twins is warming hearts around the world – and putting a spotlight on how infants can benefit from skin-to-skin contact.
According to The Huffington Post, Forældre og Fødsel, a Danish family advocacy group, originally posted the photo on Facebook last year, but the image is gaining attention again after South Africa's NINO Birth shared it May 14.
>> Click here to see the post
Skin to Skin Contact is not "new",but Sweden certainly leads the way in making this care family -friendly even for very...
Posted by NINO Birth on Saturday, May 14, 2016
The post describes "revolutionary and innovative practices in Uppsala, Sweden," where infants under 700 grams (about 1.5 pounds) are regularly given skin-to-skin contact with their parents.
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"A Swedish professor, Uwe Ewald, came to Hvidovre Hospital (Denmark) to talk about his revolutionary practice, where even very small premature babies are taken out of the incubator to be skin-to-skin with their parents as much as possible. Premature babies, born three months prematurely, are put on the parent's chest instead of alone in an incubator," the post says.
"Uwe Ewald points out that the parent's chest regulates the temperature better than an incubator. Skin-to-skin contact helps the baby to breathe better. The child becomes more calm and gains weight faster. Research shows that parents' bacterial flora – compared with hospital bacteria – reduces the risk of serious infections in these delicate children."
The post has more than 26,000 likes and 21,000 shares.
Learn more here.
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