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Skin To Skin Contact And Stress Essay

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Stress in a pre-term infant can cause health complications such as changes in vital signs, hyperextension of extremities, irritability, and the inability to integrate with other sensory input. These and other stress symptoms can delay the infant’s neurodevelopment (LaRossa, 2017). Studies have been done as to the best ways to decrease the stress that impacts the neonates daily and have shown that breast feeding and skin-to-skin contact can help reduces stress. A question that was asked was does skin-to-skin contact with the father help reduce stress as well as it does with the mother.
With preterm neonates (P), how effective is Kangaroo Care with the father (I) compared to Kangaroo Care with the mother (C) in reducing psychological and stress responses (O) while in the NICU(T)? A research that studied the effects of skin-to-skin contact with neonates and both of their parents was done in Australia. The study encompassed 25 sets of parents and their infants that were born at less than 35 weeks gestation or younger. Each session lasted a minimum of 60 minutes with either the mother of the father. Then samples of saliva from both the infant and the parent was collected in order to check salivary cortisol levels. Blood pressure of the infants and the parents were also …show more content…

There are more and more infants being born into homes where there is only one parent or one parent lives or works to far away to visit regularly. Thus, there may be a need for the infant to have skin-to-skin contact with another family member or even a surrogate adult. The research only looked into the effects of 60 minutes with the parent, but more research can be done into the effects of longer periods of time. There could even be the possibility of using simulated skin contact infants that are to fragile to have actual skin-to-skin

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