Since the weather here in The Great White North has been akin to this:
And I haven't felt truly warm since mid-October, it was a treat to sit down on a couch with a sleeping newborn and steal some of his toasty-warmness.
It reminded me of an New York Times article Andrew sent me a few weeks back on something called "Kangaroo Care". Kangaroo Care started as a solution to overcrowded and under-budgeted hospitals in Columbia. Without the money to provide for enough incubators, doctors began bundling newborns, including premies, to their mothers' - skin on skin. The drop in infancy mortality was so significant that medical communities in more "developed" nations began to take note.
"The babies stay warm, their own temperature regulated by the sympathetic biological responses that occur when mother and infant are in close physical contact. The mother’s breasts, in fact, heat up or cool down depending on what the baby needs. [...] Feeling the mother’s breathing and heartbeat helps the babies to stabilize their own heart and respiratory rates. They sleep more. They can breastfeed at will, and the constant contact encourages the mother to produce more milk."
Although most of our medical approach to pregnancy and childbirth, including incubation, is for the safety and well-being of mother and child I wonder if we miss the forest for the trees. Having just spent the last nine months (or eight, or seven...or, in some cases, five) gestating in their mom's womb, which is nine months longer than they've spent in any other environment, wouldn't being close to her be the most natural transition?
It makes me think of how fearfully and wonderfully made we are and how much creativity goes into the birth of a new person. And how those people grow up and become scientists, doctors, researchers and New York Times bloggers who can tell us incredible facts about childbirth.
