Skin-to-skin contact with mother is essential from the first moment of life and the sooner it takes place, the more benefits for the mother and her child. Different studies have also shown that this direct contact helps premature babies to overcome difficulties and that the presence of a mother or father has a real calming effect on the child.
But the brain of a newborn, even if it came into the world before its time, never ceases to amaze us, and it has done it again: researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the Parini Hospital in Italy and the University of the Valley de Aosta, have observed that, when the mother speaks or sings to her premature baby while performing some medical intervention, her expression of pain decreases. And it is that maternal love is “almost” the best of medicines.
The benefits of being close to mom
When a baby is born before 37 weeks of gestation, it is usually separated from its parents and taken to an incubator in the intensive care unit so that it continues to grow healthy.
This premature, for a few weeks, can be subjected to several medical interventions, such as intubation, blood extraction or a feeding tube.
These processes have an impact on its development, since it is not always possible to alleviate this pain with pharmaceutical analgesics, due to possible effects on its neurological development. Hence the importance of the advances verified and published in Scientific Reports of the journal Nature, because they seem to corroborate that the mother’s voice could help the baby to manage pain during these medical processes.
Assuming that the emotional modulations of the mother’s and father’s voices calm the premature baby, Didier Grandjean’s team, professor of the Section of Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPSE) and of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA) of the UNIGE, was interested in the early vocal contact between the mother and the premature baby and in how the mother’s voice impacts the management of pain derived from the routine practices necessary for the follow-up of premature babies.
The voice reduced the expression signs of pain in the baby
Researchers followed 20 premature babies at the Parini Hospital in Italy and asked the mother to be present during the daily blood test performed on them by drawing drops of blood from the heel.
They focused on the mother’s voice, according to Dr. Manuela Filippa, first author of the study, because “in the first days of life it is more difficult for the father to be present, due to working conditions that do not always allow days off” .
The study contained three phases that were carried out over three days, allowing comparisons to be made. The first injection was administered without the mother, the second with the mother talking to the baby, and the third with the mother singing to her , both times from five minutes before prodding. The order was changed randomly.
The researcher explains that since intensive care units are also often noisy due to ventilation and other medical equipment, the intensity of the voice was measured to cover the ambient noise.
The research team looked at whether pain was reduced with the mother present, using the Premature Baby Pain Profile (PIPP). This establishes a coding grid of facial expressions and physiological parameters (heartbeat, oxygenation) that tests the baby’s pain between 0 and 21. As detailed by the study author:
“The result is important. In the absence of the mother, the PIPP is 4.5, and when the mother speaks to the baby, the PIPP drops to 3. When the mother sings, the PIPP is 3.8. This difference with regard to the spoken voice, it can be explained by the fact that it does not adapt very well to what the mother perceives in the baby when she sings “.
Singing or talking to a premature baby increases oxytocin levels
“We immediately studied the so-called attachment hormone, oxytocin, which was already associated with stress, attachment problems and pain in previous studies.”
These are the words of Dr. Manuela Filippa, who details how they measured it.
Using painless saliva samples before the mother spoke and sang and after the heel stab, oxytocin levels increased from 0.8 picograms per milliliter to 1.4 when the mother spoke. This is a huge increase. “
These results indicate that the presence of the mother has a positive effect when the premature baby receives painful medical treatment.
And Dr. Didier Grandjan adds that communicating with the baby also helps to reinforce attachment :
“Parents can play a protective role here and take action and feel involved in helping their children as much as possible, something that is taken for granted in term delivery. This reinforces the essential attachment bond.”
Via | Geneva University
Photos | iStock
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