Kangaroo care—why keeping baby close is better for everyone

Enlarge / Kangaroo care, mimicking the animal's early childhood care by acting as a human incubator for new babies, has picked up steam in terms of both science and scope of implementation. (credit: ©Juliana Gomez)

A shortage of incubators and a hunch about marsupials inspired a Colombian doctor to try something radical to save premature babies’ lives. For Mosaic, Lena Corner reports that now some believe constant skin-to-skin contact with parents is not only cheaper than hi-tech neonatal care—it may be better, too. The story is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Carmela Torres was 18 when she became pregnant for the first time. It was 1987, and she and her now-husband, Pablo Hernandez, were two idealistic young Colombians born in the coastal region of Montería who moved to the capital, Bogotá, in search of freedom and a better life. When Torres told her father she was expecting, he was so angered by the thought of his daughter having a child out of wedlock that they didn’t speak to each other for years.

Torres remained undaunted. Her pregnancy was trouble-free and she had a new life in Bogotá to get on with. But one December afternoon, suddenly, out of nowhere, her body began to convulse with sharp contractions. It was more than two months before her due date. She called Hernandez and together they rushed to the Instituto Materno Infantil (Mother and Child Hospital) in eastern Bogotá. Not long after arriving, she gave birth naturally to a baby boy weighing just 1,650 grams (3lb 10oz).