Self-Regulatory Preterm Infant Care: Adaptation Postbirth

A similar intervention was studied in a RCT with fullterm infants but this was done with emphasis on close contact rather than skin-to-skin contact and lasted only the first 6 hours postbirth. This study was conducted by the same PI and funded by the National Center for Nursing Research, NIH 1990-1994. This research yielded numerous significant and beneficial differences.

Two pilot studies were done with healthy late preterm infants and mothers who planned to breastfeed. Skin-to-skin contact began in the delivery room. The first pilot was a descriptive exploratory study with 10 mother-infant dyads done in Cali, Colombia; skin-to-skin began at birth and lasted through hour 6 when all dyads went to the postpartum ward. Follow-up was through hospital discharge on the second day. All outcomes were positive.

The second pilot was an RCT done in the United States with a well balanced sample of 8 dyads, 4 in each group. Mean observation time lasted 47 hours (Medicaid required discharge time for the mothers) with skin-to-skin contact occurring 84% of the time. All outcomes favored the skin-to-skin group, for example 3.8 days to discharge home compared to 14.5 for the controls. Follow-up was at one year and similarly positive.

Similar differences were hypothesized for the RCT reported here in which the intervention was extended to the care of somewhat smaller and sicker preterm infants and lasted five days unless the infant was discharged sooner. The consent form was in layman terms, four pages long, and fulfilled all the requirements of the Institutional Review Boards of the Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and its General Clinical Research Center, and Kadlec Medical Center, Richmond, WA.