There's swaddling and then there's Swaddling, as practiced in Russia from
birth onwards and in many other countries where then-Soviet birth culture
made inroads.
In the March issue of Acta Paediatrica (the one with Lisa Amir's cover photo
and her great article on duration of BF correlating with prenatal intent to
BF :-)) there is an article about a study done in St. Petersburg, Russia, in
collaboration with many of the foremost Swedish breastfeeding researchers
alive.  They compared body temperatures in babies swaddled and laid in cots,
swaddled and held in mother's arms, clothed and laid in cots, clothed and
held in mother's arms, and babies left skin-to-skin on mother's bare chest.
All these treatments were carried out in the first two hours post partum and
they controlled well for confounders.

They measured skin temperature in one axilla, on the back, thigh and foot, I
think.  The foot and the axilla were definitely two of the points, at any
rate.  What they found was that the swaddled babies had colder feet than any
other group.  The skin-to-skin group had the warmest feet.  Body temp
otherwise was within normal range for all babies.  The reduced foot
temperature in the swaddled babies persisted for days.  They believe that
the difference in foot temperature between the groups cannot be explained by
temperature conservation alone, but that the swaddled babies had higher
cortisol levels and the s-t-s babies had the lowest, implying that lying
naked on mother's body was the most energy efficient way of helping babies
recover from the normal stress of being born.  Higher foot temp was believed
to come from better perfusion of the extremities due to vasodilation.  The
duration of the lowered foot temp in the tightly swaddled babies could
indicate that this increase in cortisol production is long lasting.  Also
worth noting is that in both groups observed in cots or in mother's arms,
the babies in cots were colder than babies held in mother's arms.

John Kennell wrote a commentary to this study, published in the same issue
of Acta Paediatrica, saying what you'd expect one of the first researchers
to notice bonding as a survival process to say.  Worth reading as much as
the study is.

When I read this article I realized that we are always looking for
nutritional explanations for the impaired health of babies who are not
breastfed.  But simply being born in a culture that separates mother and
baby immediately post partum, and 'allows' them to be together as long as
their skins barely touch, could have implications for our blood pressure and
even our insulin metabolism for the rest of our lives.  I believe
breastfeeding would mitigate the effects of such unphysiologic care, but it
would be far better if we regained some respect for what newborns and
mothers really need, and changed our way of 'caring' for them to reflect
those needs.  Simply placing a baby under a warming lamp is an insult to
both baby and mother - as though the only thing mother is good for, is
generating heat.

This tight swaddling from birth onwards is not very much like the swaddling
shown on the 'miracle blanket' website.  My hesitancy about the blanket is
more from the marketing (implying babies ought to sleep all night from a
very, very young age, inter alia) than from the swaddling as it is shown
here.  Also, they spelled dysplasia 'displacia' when boasting that the
blanket won't inhibit development of hips and knees - that always weakens my
confidence in a product.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway
still feeling warm to the tips of my own toes after attending a beautiful,
normal home birth two nights ago, where baby stayed naked on mother's body
til after her first feed was completed - about two hours post partum.
Baby's axillary temp was 36.9 C (98.4 F) at two hours and her toes were warm
and pink.  She had by then been suckling with audible swallows most of the
time, for about 80 minutes.

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html