Teams are hard at work implementing change and piloting creative approaches. A particular area of emphasis has been on skin-to-skin care. According to some NICU parents, the first time they considered themselves real parents was the first time a nurse encouraged them to hold their baby skin-to-skin. Kangaroo care enables moms to regain the temporarily lost relationship with their child, and enables fathers to experience the beginning of a new relationship. Most importantly for our initiative, studies have found that mothers increased their milk volume, doubled rates of successful breastfeeding and increased duration of breastfeeding with skin-to-skin holding. A small team, drawn from the Human Milk Well Baby Initiative is exploring partnering with the March of Dimes to adapt "Close to Me" - a comprehensive set of awareness and educational activities, tools and products designed to increase the onset and frequency of Kangaroo Care in the NICU - to the nursery setting.
