Tubes, tape and kangaroo cuddles – France

This tiny baby, all tucked up with Mum, alongside the tubes and the tapes and her mask, couldn’t be in a safer place. All babies and mothers should be able to enjoy plenty of quiet time snuggling together skin to skin because the advantages to both of what is also called kangaroo care are many and profound. This is even more the case for babies born early like this youngster, who arrived before 27 week’s gestation causing the mother to describe this arrival as ‘the most awful moment of my life’.

Like many mothers of very preterm infants, she really struggled with expressing her milk and in the end, felt she just needed to be free of the energy draining and time consuming nature of trying to make milk for her baby. She wanted to be able to focus on giving all the other care and attention that her baby needed and that would help her to become a more relaxed and less exhausted mother to her tiny little bundle. The availability of donor human milk meant that she could relax in the knowledge that her baby would still be able to benefit from human milk’s optimal nutrition and many vitally important components.  After a total of 68 days of receiving donor milk, together with all of the rest of the care provided on the neonatal unit, her baby had grown and after 93 days in hospital they were both at home together enjoying a happy ending after their scary start. As you can see from the photo, this baby was transformed into a beautiful and no longer tiny little bundle and cuddles can now be enjoyed without all of the former tapes and tubes and masks.

Lunch time; on the menu – donor milk!

Together at home. It’s a wrap!!