Every year, from August 1st to 7th, the world unites to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week. This global campaign, coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), aims to highlight the vital role of breastfeeding in promoting maternal and infant health. This year’s theme is “Closing the gap: Breastfeeding support for all,”. Initiating breastfeeding is particularly challenging for babies who are born premature or unwell and need to spend time in neonatal intensive care.

The Role of Kangaroo Mother Care in Supporting Breastfeeding:

Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is a simple yet powerful practice involving skin-to-skin contact between a newborn and a parent. There has been extensive research into the benefits of kangaroo care and skin to skin contact into helping to establish breast feeding.

Preterm babies are often in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) for extended periods.  It has been shown that increased skin to skin contact  through KMC reduces morbidity and hospital stay and improves rates of breastfeeding and that benefits are retained over the long term (Charpak et al, 2017).  Increased breastfeeding also reduces morbidity for both baby and mother. (Conde-Agudelo et al, 2016).

SurePulse:

SurePulse recognises the importance of Kangaroo Mother Care, including for those born preterm or low birthweight; Our vision is a world where baby-centred innovation transforms neonatal outcomes.

Wireless monitoring of the baby is believed likely to increase rates of KMC by making it easy for staff to facilitate KMC, and to improve the quality and duration of KMC delivered in terms of comfort, to reduce the need to disturb the baby to adjust sensors, and which subsequently will improve bonding of parent and baby (Bonner et al, 2017).  This enhanced bonding of parent and baby will help breast milk production.

The SurePulse VS is SurePulse’s first device approved in the US, UK and EU for clinical use, and comprises a thermo-protective single-use cap that provides clinical teams with wireless, continuous and accurate heart rate information.

References

Bonner O, Beardsall K, Crilly N, Lasenby J. ‘There were more wires than him’: the potential for wireless patient monitoring in neonatal intensive care. BMJ innovations. 2017 Feb 1;3(1).

Charpak N, Tessier R, Ruiz JG, Hernandez JT, Uriza F, Villegas J, Nadeau L, Mercier C, Maheu F, Marin J, Cortes D. Twenty-year follow-up of kangaroo mother care versus traditional care. Pediatrics. 2017 Jan 1;139(1).

Conde-Agudelo_A, Díaz-Rossello_JL. Kangaroo mother care to reduce morbidity and mortality in low birthweight infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2016, Issue 8. Art. No.: CD002771. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD002771.pub4.