It's not surprising that interaction with their mothers is helpful to babies who are born prematurely - but new research spotlights some of the specific benefits. Featured in an NIH press release today, a study of a method called H-HOPE (Hospital to Home: Optimizing the Premature Infant’s Environment) found that it correlated with a marked improvement in infant weight gain, length growth, and muscular ability to feed from a bottle.
The H-HOPE program has two parts: First, it teaches mothers to use a multi-sensory intervention that features auditory, tactile, visual, and vestibular stimulation (an "ATVV intervention"), and then it trains mothers to recognize their infants' subtle communication cues, which are much more discreet than those of term infants. Instead of crying and putting their hand in their mouth to indicate hunger, for example, pre-term babies may weakly lift their hand towards their mouth. The fifteen-minute ATVV intervention, which was administered twice daily before feedings, started with a soft female voice, followed by a gentle massage, eye-to-eye contact, and then rocking-in-arms.
The initial study, published in the Journal of Perinatology, was headed by Rosemary C. White-Traut, PhD, RN, professor emeritus in the department of Women, Children and Family Health Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing. The 183 babies in the study were born between 29 and 34 weeks gestation, and their mothers were involved in the H-HOPE program from the time the baby reached 31 weeks until one month after the approximate date the baby would have been born had the pregnancy reached term. The mothers each received visits from a nurse-community health advocate to make sure the procedures were going smoothly, twice in the hospital and twice after discharge.
Each of the participants had at least two social-environmental risk factors, and half of them were Hispanic, a group with a high rate of prematurity. As White-Traut commented in the release, "When we planned our research, we thought that preterm infants from impoverished backgrounds likely would benefit the most from this intervention. Poverty is linked to poorer long-term health and infant development. And as with other negative health influences, preterm infants usually are affected more strongly than term infants."
White-Traut's study showed improved weight gain and growth in the babies; a follow up study (to be published in Advances in Neonatal Care) showed that infants also had better muscular ability to suck from a bottle just after receiving the ATVV intervention, via a sensor placed on the bottle's nipple while they ate.
Premature birth is a risk factor for a swath of other diseases and developmental disorders. Valerie Maholmes, PhD, chief of the Pediatric Trauma and Critical Illness Branch at the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the research along with the NIH's National Institute of Nursing Research, is also quoted in the release:
Preterm infants who fail to gain sufficient weight are at a higher risk for delays and even impairments in cognitive ability and motor skills. We are hopeful that this intervention will prove to be an important tool in safeguarding the long-term health of an extremely vulnerable group of infants.
Previously: Helping families navigate the NICU and A low-cost way to keep premature babies warm and well
Photo by Government of Alberta
