In my client folders, I include graphs that I got at a Gene Cranston Anderson KCare talk in the early nineties.  The upper graph shows the heart rate and breathing of a premie in an isolette.  The middle graph, which is covered with a flap of paper, shows heart rate and breathing of the same baby during KCare.  The bottom graph is same baby's heart rate and breathing back in the isolette.  

The four visible tracings are jagged, erratic.  Lift the flap, and you see two smooth, steady lines.  The difference is obvious, whether or not you know how to read a graph.  "This is the best that medical science can provide," I tell parents.  "And *this* is what you can do just by holding your baby's skin against yours."  We talk about how all a baby's needs are increased if he's not in contact with an adult - that part of hospital nervousness about those first meals is that a baby who isn't physiologically stable has more urgent needs.  Provide the skin, and there's less urgency about the rest.  Parents are generally charmed by what their bodies can do for their babies, and they seem to feel less "guilt" about "unnecessary" holding...

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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