Celebrate International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day with Us!

We are excited to once again celebrate along with you International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day on 15 May 2015. Now in its fourth year, the day was established to raise awareness and educate families about the benefits of skin-to-skin contact, also known as Kangaroo Care, in the early days and weeks.

As International Board Certified Lactation Consultants® (IBCLC®), we regularly encourage the families we work with to hold their babies to their chests with skin touching, we advocate for policy changes in hospitals, and we educate the public about this important practice. It is no secret to the families we serve that this practice positively impacts their infants with comfort and calm.

As lactation consultants, most of us are well-versed in the importance of keeping babies skin to skin with their mothers. We are grateful to have had Dr. Nils Bergman, a leading researcher on Kangaroo Care and skin-to-skin contact, as a featured speaker at past ILCA Conferences. Recently, he was featured on a podcast with Marie Biancuzzo, in honor of International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day. In the podcast, he discusses how kangaroo care impacts families, especially in regard to bonding after birth. He advises that this should be standard care for all infants. We encourage our readers to listen to the podcast to hear about the latest research and clinical insights.

Photo used with permission from NuRoo.

For more information about Kangaroo Care and skin-to-skin contact, we encourage you to review this Chochrane Review titled Early skin-to-skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants.

We encourage you, on 15 May, in celebration of International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day, to take a few moments to read a new article, engage in conversation with a new health care provider, and encourage more families to keep their baby right on their chest, right where they belong.