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Kangaroo Care in Death Too?

September 20, 2017 By sgarrett Leave a Comment

I read an article in the Vancouver Sun today all about a practice used with premature and under weight infants – a practice called kangaroo care. Here is a little bit about kangaroo care:

“Kangaroo care (KC) is the practice of skin-to-skin contact between infant and parent. In developing countries, KC for low-birth weight infants has been shown to reduce mortality, severe illness, infection and length of hospital stay. Cardio respiratory and temperature stability, sleep organization and duration, modulation of pain responses appear to be improved for preterm infants who have received KC during their hospital stay.

No detrimental effects on physiological stability have been demonstrated. “

And another quotation:

“Kangaroo care is one way of involving both mothers and fathers in the care of their at-risk infant and helps to humanize the premature birth experience.”

So I thought if this sort of physical human contact truly supports the infant birth experience could we not use similar human touch intervention to humanize an otherwise medicalized, and lonely dying process? Answer – yes of course we can.

The photograph here shows a friend and client of mine lying with her dying grandmother in a loving ‘kangaroo care’ embrace as Granny was actively dying. What a loving way to pass. It was soothing for Granny and healing for Darlene!

Alive in Death training provides the important self-care practices and awareness that will enable those of us intending to make death more human to take great care of both those dying AND ourselves. Have a look see.

Warmly and with gratitude

Stephen

Filed Under: Dying and Death

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sgarrett

About sgarrett

Death is one of North America’s biggest taboos. No one wants to talk about it, so we suffer bad deaths. We can die better, come find out how. Start by subscribing via rss or e-mail.

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The mission of We Can Die Better is to generously serve readers with contemporary, accurate, and well researched information regarding the intimate and important process of dying, death and grief and to do so with boldness, compassion, creativity and humor.

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