Jan Barger asked:
>Does anyone know of any studies/articles documenting the efficacy of skin to
>skin contact in heating a cold newborn?  (Not kangaroo care articles -- they
>won't do for this particular group that is requesting the information).  What
>I'm after is an article that demonstrates that putting a full term newborn
>skin to skin with mom will bring his core temperature up to normal as quickly
>as putting him stark nekked under a warmer.

Ann-Marie Widstrom has just been here and given a seminar about the
importance of skin to skin contact, self-attachment, etc for newborn term
babies. In her notes that we got copies of, she mentions a study by
Chrisensson, Siles, Moreno, Belastequi & de la Fuenta (1992) 'Temperature,
metabolic adaptation and crying in healthy full-term newborns cared for
skin-to-skin or in a cot' Acta Paediatr 81: 488-493.

In the text she writes:
'It has earlier been shown that infants kept skin-to-skin on their mother's
chest have higher body temperature and blood glucose levels than infants
kept in a cot beside the mother. These results indicate that the infants
saved energy while being warmed by the mother and/or activation of the
baby's metabolism might have contributed.' It goes on to say that babies
with temperature under 36C significantly warmed up 3 minutes after suckling
started, and their colour changed to a more rose/red-rose colour. It is
suggested that the baby's innate program to start suckling may positively
affect the baby's ability to be warm, maybe through activating the baby's
metabolism.

Another promising sounding reference at the end of Ann-Marie's paper is:
Jansson, Mustafa, Khan, Lindblad & Widstrom (1995) 'The effects of
medically-oriented labour ward routines on prefeeding behaviour and body
temperature in newborn infants' J Trop Ped 41: 360-363.

Hope these are useful.

Joy Anderson IBCLC, NMAA Breastfeeding Counsellor,
Perth, Western Australia
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