When my daughter was born, she was really premature and, as a result,
really sick. So it wasn’t surprising that she spent nearly a month inside an incubator
–basically a sterile box full of all sorts of high-tech equipment– so medical experts could
control her surroundings and monitor her every move. What WAS surprising was that,
for a few hours every day, she was pulled out of that box, stripped of all her tubes and monitors,
and swaddled onto the bare chest of a decidedly non-expert person.
Hi, I’m David, this is MinuteEarth, and, at least some of the time, that non-expert was me.
Doctors call what I was doing “kangaroo care,” since the skin-to-skin contact it creates is a
lot like the cozy confines of a kangaroo’s pouch. At the time, I worried it was risky,
since it took my baby away from that sterile box and all those monitoring devices. But
I’m a data-driven science nerd, so you know I dug through the research. And I found that not only is
kangaroo care not risky, it’s actually one of the best things we do to help babies born too early.
There seem to be a couple major reasons for this. First, kangaroo care is a great way to keep a baby
warm. Premature babies have less fat and more relative surface area than full-term babies,
so they can’t always keep their body temperature up. And it turns out that skin is way better at
conducting heat than air is. Preemies that get skin-to-skin care are 67% less likely to suffer
from hypothermia than those that don’t. Second, during kangaroo care, bacteria
from the parent’s skin hop onto the baby. Which sounds dangerous,
but in order to develop a healthy immune system, a baby needs to be exposed to the right amount
of bacteria early in life. Full-term babies get this exposure in their mom’s womb during
the last few months of pregnancy, but preemies miss out. By microdosing them with bacteria,
kangaroo care can cut a preemie’s chances of developing a major infection like sepsis in half.
There also seems to be some additional advantage to being cuddled up with another human,
rather than alone in a box – which maybe isn’t all that surprising. We aren’t sure exactly what the
mechanism here is though – maybe it’s the sound of a nearby heartbeat, or a reassuring smell – or
the feeling of soft skin instead of hard plastic. But babies who get kangaroo care have lower heart
rates, breathe more steadily, and get more sleep. Kangaroo care also benefits the kangaroos –I mean
parents– in this scenario, which in turn, benefits the babies. For whatever reason, people who do
kangaroo care are more likely to breastfeed, which has all sorts of advantages for a baby’s overall
health. Parents who do kangaroo care are also more likely to say they feel bonded with their baby,
to notice when something is wrong with their kiddo, and to feel more confident about taking
care of their baby once they’re back at home. Of course, this low-tech practice isn’t the
only intervention we have for babies born too early; doctors also use CPAP machines to keep
their lungs working, steroid injections to help their organs develop, and IV lines
to get them the nutrients they need. But even considering all these higher-tech interventions,
premature babies that get kangaroo care are 30% more likely to survive than babies that don't.
And if you don't have access to those higher-tech interventions, then kangaroo care makes an even
bigger difference for survival. My daughter is one of those lucky survivors. And my son – well,
he was born full-term, so he didn’t need the same intensive kangaroo care that she did.
But our gratitude for the intervention made it extra fitting when we decided to name him Joey.
You can probably tell I’m pretty passionate about life-saving interventions like kangaroo
care. Which is why I’m thrilled to say that this video was sponsored by GiveWell, an organization
devoted to finding the absolute best ways for people to help save lives around the world.
GiveWell has now spent over 15 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding
to a few of the HIGHEST-IMPACT organizations they’ve found –like Helen Keller International,
which distributes supplements to prevent vitamin A deficiency, and the Against Malaria Foundation,
which distributes mosquito nets to prevent malaria. And, recently, the research institute
for compassionate economics, which trains hospital workers how to counsel parents of
premature babies on –you guessed it– kangaroo care. You can donate to a fund directed to
GiveWell’s top choices on their website, where 100% of your donations go directly to the
charities. On top of that, if you’re a first time donor, Givewell will match your donation
dollar for dollar up to a hundred dollars. Go to Givewell.org/MinuteEarth to donate. And to make
sure your donation gets matched, at checkout on the “how did you hear about GiveWell” question
click YouTube and then “MinuteEarth”. Again that’s Givewell.org/minuteearth