A baby born prematurely often has to be separated from its parents and placed in an incubator in intensive care. For several weeks, he or she will undergo routine medical procedures that can be painful, without being relieved by too many pharmaceutical painkillers, which are risky for his or her development. So how can we act for the good of the baby? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the Parini Hospital in Italy and the University of Valle d'Aosta, observed that when the mother spoke to her baby at the time of the medical intervention, the signs of the baby's expression of pain decreased and his oxytocin level -- the hormone involved in attachment and also linked to stress -- increased significantly, which could attest to better pain management. These results, to be read in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrate the importance of parental presence with premature babies, who are subjected to intense stress from birth, a presence that has a real impact on their well-being and development.
As soon as they are born before 37 weeks of gestation, premature babies are separated from their parents and placed in an incubator, often in intensive care. They have to undergo daily medical interventions, necessary to keep them alive (intubation, blood sampling, feeding tube, etc.), which have potential impacts on their development and pain management. The difficulty? It is not always possible to relieve them with pharmaceutical painkillers, as the short and long term side effects on their neurological development can be significant. There are other ways to relieve the baby, such as wrapping, restraint, sugar solutions or non-nutritive sucking with a teat. However, for several years now, studies have shown that the presence of a mother or father has a real calming effect on the child, particularly through the emotional modulations of the voice. This is why the team of Didier Grandjean, full professor at the Psychology Section of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPSE) and at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA) of the UNIGE, has been interested in the early vocal contact between the mother and the premature baby, in the impact of the mother's voice on the management of pain resulting from the routine practices necessary for the follow-up of the babies, and in the psychological and cerebral mechanisms that would be involved. Read more...
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