Hug therapy: volunteers stimulate the development of premature babies in Argentina

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Irma Castro, 60, sits in the neat neonatology room of the Provincial Maternity Hospital of Córdoba, in Argentina, with a premature baby pressed to her chest.

The child's face touches the skin of the woman who looks at him in silence and accompanies him while the little one listens to his heartbeat and sighs, letting out the stress that living in an incubator causes him.

He will remain like this, calm, for the next two hours feeling Irma's healing heat until it is time to return to the cabin where he receives intensive care.

Irma is one of the hospital's volunteer “huggers.”

She offers her skin to enhance the neurodevelopment of premature or low-weight babies, whose mothers are absent because they have low economic resources, live far from the motherhood, have other children, are deprived of their liberty, are victims of violence or substance abusers. addictive

There are 50 volunteers – 49 women and one man – who donate their time to accompany the newborns and there are more than 200 applicants on the waiting list.

“I want them to be certain that since they were born they have been loved and accepted.

One is amazed at how warriors they are, at the desire of these creatures to live,” says Castro, a retired teacher and volunteer for more than two years.

Nancy Sánchez Zanón, head of the Maternity Neonatology Department, explains that the average intensive care in an incubator is around 12 days, but can be extended for months, depending on the pathology and prematurity.

In this hospital, about 1,500 babies of the approximately 5,200 born each year require intensive care.

About 15% need to be hugged.

A one-month-old baby clings to the hand of volunteer Irma Castro.RAMIRO PEREYRA

Ana María Rognone, head of intermediate care at the Maternity Hospital and coordinator of the program, explains that the project was born within the framework of volunteering in “safe and family-centered maternities”, a paradigm of perinatal care in the public maternities of Córdoba.

It began in 2010 replicating a strategy promoted in Buenos Aires by the Ramón Sardá Maternal and Child Hospital together with Unicef.

This approach seeks humanized care with an eye on the rights of the mother and child, through improving the quality of care and reducing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.

In this scenario, parents and family are intended to assume a leading role in care and learn about the benefits of breastfeeding.

For their part, the institutions offer residences so that mothers can remain close to their babies and invite members of the community to get involved in volunteer activities.

“The health team cannot do it alone;

With families it adds up and with the community it adds up much more,” Rognone thinks.

In 2017, the “huggers” were incorporated thanks to the information provided by a volunteer about the Baby Cuddler program that they carry out in Canada with children of heroin-addicted mothers.

From there, she adapted to Argentine reality.

A health strategy

The volunteers are a support for the health team: they detect if a baby does not receive visitors, they know the difficulties, shortcomings or problems of the mothers and they replace the maternal absence with their own body.

For this, the mother's written consent is requested.

Hugging helps them grow faster and gain weight.

“We don't lend people to hug.

This is a health strategy, with a supportive health team, with a scientific basis and with a training process for entry into volunteering,” emphasizes Rognone.

To volunteer, all you have to do is be over 18 years old, certify good conduct and have an impeccable record regarding crimes against sexual integrity.

Then, the selection depends on the availability of time and expectations.

What the program seeks is not to cover the personal needs of those who help, but those of others.

Ana María Rognone, head of intermediate care at the Maternity Hospital and volunteer coordinator, checks a baby inside the incubator.RAMIRO PEREYRA

Nancy Sánchez Zanón insists that the function of the “huggers” is to be at the service of the mothers and be the link with the health team.

But, without a doubt, the value of skin-to-skin contact is great.

“It is very good to know that for two hours that baby will be in contact with a person and not assisted in an incubator.

The hug relieves tension and calms anguish,” says Paula Yacante, a 50-year-old English translator, one of the first volunteers.

The head of Neonatology explains that it is scientifically proven that babies develop better and faster when they have physical contact with their mother.

In the event that the parent is absent, the link with a third person is also effective.

“Skin-to-skin contact helps the child grow and regain weight faster, it promotes neurodevelopment, protection, care, and growth.

Being less stressed, because he is in his arms and supported emotionally, he regulates his temperature better, has fewer apneas, and gains weight faster than if he is not linked to anyone,” she details.

Volunteer Pierina Vans, a 52-year-old interior designer, adds that, when feeling hugged, the baby displays its primary survival instinct: it relaxes and feels protected;

he stops consuming his own energy.

“When you hug him and the baby has skin-to-skin contact, he feels like he sighs and the color of his skin begins to change,” she says.

“When you take it, you see that his hands are clenched, then he relaxes and his heart rate drops,” adds the doctor.

In the event that the babies cannot be hugged due to the impossibility of disconnecting their intravenous lines or tubes, the volunteers reach into the incubator and hold the baby's hand or rest theirs on the child's legs or chest.

“Sometimes you think you're happy, but in reality you are filled when you feel how in that small body there is so much desire to live, there is an attachment to how beautiful life is,” says Irma Castro.

She believes that helping a child have a better beginning is contributing to humanity.

While doing her volunteer shift as a cuddler, Irma enjoys the baby's company.

Skin-to-skin contact improves the neurodevelopment of premature or low-weight children.RAMIRO PEREYRA

María Cristina Nieva, a 45-year-old educational psychologist, feels privileged to fulfill this task as a volunteer.

“She feels peace, love, satisfaction.

When they are discharged it is a great joy, especially those who have been there for a long time and have passed through the arms of everyone.

We celebrated it,” she remarks.

The word love vibrates in volunteering.

The women repeat it with moist eyes.

“We offer the baby a moment of emotional fusion, tranquility, security, comfort, warmth.

I feel that I am giving a grain of sand and adding to the path of good,” says volunteer Paula Otto, 52, coordinator of a community wardrobe.

Heal with affection

Cuddling babies for a couple of hours begins after they have been changed and fed.

“Nurses are our guides because babies are not always in a position to be hugged.

Sometimes they have to undergo medical practice;

They guide us,” says Pierina.

They take them out of the incubator following a protocol and place them on the chest, trying to be as calm as possible so that the baby is relaxed.

If the mother or father shows up at that moment, it is handed over to them immediately.

“We are a substitute for that absence,” says Vans.

Then come the tours of the hospitalization wards, where they note the needs of the mothers.

Volunteer Marcela Mancardo, a 59-year-old housewife, says that the first baby she hugged had not had contact with her mother due to a health problem.

The baby went from the delivery room to the incubator.

“I was the first to hug her my first time as a volunteer.

It was an explosion of love.

I cried at home,” she says.

Volunteer Susana Sassy, ​​an 82-year-old retired architect, says that when she picks up a newborn, she touches the sky with her hands.

“It's wonderful to hear that

little heart

beating.

Many of us have been mothers, but this is different;

You are committed to a different love.

It is giving light, life and love,” she thinks.

Part of the team: Susana Sassy, ​​in the middle, along with Eugenia Lucca, Marcela Mancardo, Verónica Conci and Pierina Vanz.RAMIRO PEREYRA

Verónica Conci, a 52-year-old therapeutic companion and one of the last to join volunteering, remembers that in the training she was struck by a phrase by Ana Rognone quoting the French gynecologist Michel Oddent: “To change the world it is necessary to change the way we are born.” .

“We can change the way a baby comes into this world, more human, more content, more loved;

that she feels that she is important.

That being in an incubator for 24 hours, three days, is not the same as someone picking you up, hugging you and giving you their heart and skin, which is what we give,” she points out.

She thinks that, perhaps, when she lends her breast and arms to a child, she affects her future.

The work of the “huggers” has become better known in recent times.

At the end of last year they were chosen as Cordoban Personality 2023. “I think it was the icing on the cake to show that from the outside you can be in a neonatology room and the importance of covering a certain vulnerable population that cannot be at that moment with their baby,” says Rognone.

For her, all maternity hospitals should incorporate the community to accompany the families.

“It is not cured with medicine alone but with affection.”