1. Objectifs

Intentions :
Promote actively the Kangaroo mother care in the context of prematurity.

Questions/Hypothèses :
Skin-to skin contact in the KMC group will build up a positive perception in the mothers and a state of readiness to detect and respond to infant’s cues.

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
488 infants weighting (2001 g, with 246 in the Kangaroo mother care and 242 in the traditional care.

Instruments :
- The design allows precise observation of the timing and duration of mother-infant contact, and takes into account the infant’s health status at birth and the socioeconomic status of the parents;
- Bonding Assessment: assessed attachment mother-child.

Type de traitmeent des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

« We observed a change in the mothers’ perception of her child, attribuable to the skin-to-skin contact in the kangaroo-carrying position. This effect is related to a subjective ’bonding effect’ that may be understood readily by the empowering nature of the KMC intervention. Moreover, in stressful situations when the infant has to remain in the hospital longer, mothers practicing KMC feel more competent than do mothers in the traditional care group. This is what we call a resilience effect. In these stressful situations we also found a negative effect on the feelings of received support of mothers practicing KMC. We interpret this as an isolation effect. To thwart this deleterious effect, we would suggest adding social support as an integral component of KMC. The results suggest that KMC should be promoted actively and that mothers should be encouraged to use it as soon as possible during the intensive care period up to 40 weeks of gestional age.Thus, KMC should be viewed as a means of humanizing the process of giving birth in a context of prematurity. »