By Diane Schultz

I thought I would start off my series of posts with one of the most basic reasons we do Kangaroo Care.
Thermoregulation is the process of maintaining an infant’s temperature within normal range. Thermoregulation is extremely important for the newborn (term or preterm). An infant’s body surface area is 3X greater than an adult’s, causing them to potentially lose heat rapidly, up to 4X faster. When cold stressed, infants use energy and oxygen to generate warmth.  Oxygen consumption can increase by as much as 10%. Thermoregulation of the infants allows them to conserve energy and build up *reserves”.

What Happens When An infant Is Placed Skin to Skin?

When the term infant is placed skin to skin at birth, the mother’s breasts immediately start to warm and conduct heat to the infant, helping to maintain normal blood sugar levels due to the infant not having to use their own brown fat to stay warm (Bergstrom et al.,2007;Bystrova et al.,2007;Ludington-Hoe et al.,2000,2006) (Chantry,2005;Christensson et al.,1992).

Kangaroo Care maintains a Neutral Thermal Environment (defined as the ideal setting in which an infant can maintain a normal body temperature while producing only the minimum amount of heat generated from basal life-sustaining metabolic processes).
In our unit, any infant that needs an incubator to maintain their temperature can only come out to be held by Kangaroo Care instead of being bundle held. To help maintain thermoregulation we make sure the infant and parent are in a draft free area, and use 2-4 layers of blankets over the infant (you can always remove a layer if needed). Infants weighing less than 1000gms should wear some type of head cap and monitor them using the incubator’s temperature probe. Remember too, we don’t want any bras or clothing between the infant and the mother, fabric will interfere with the conductance of heat from mother to infant (Ludington-Hoe et al.,2000).
One of the interesting things about KC and thermoregulation is if a mother holds twins in KC each breast works independently to warm each infant (Ludington-Hoe, et al.,2006). Triplets? Not sure, but our mothers hold their “trips” together all the time and we have had no issues.
Now, how about the father? Does he thermoregulate like the mother? With mothers you have what is called Thermal Synchrony (maternal breast temperatures changing in response to the infant’s temperature) (Ludington-Hoe, et al.,1990;1994,2000) where the fathers chests will warm up when the infant is placed in KC but will not cool down (Maastrup & Greisen, 2010). We don’t have any issues with our fathers overheating, just lots of hair to be picked off the infant after!