[Impact of Kangaroo mother care immediately after birth on mothers attachment behaviors at one and three months after birth]

ABSTRACT

Kangaroo mother care [kmc] was first suggested in 1978 as caring for low birth weight infants. Few studies have been undertaken using it for term infants and assessing mother behaviors after birth. The present study, therefore designed to investigate the effects of kangaroo mother care on attachment behaviors [affection, caring, proximity] of Iranian primiparous mothers with their term new born immediately after birth. A clinical random trial design was undertaken with a sample of 790 primiparous mothers drawn from a hospital in Tehran. They were randomly divided to case and control groups. The infants in case group were placed in contact with their mothers' skin immediately after the birth for 15-20 minutes and the mothers were asked to touch and feed them. The observant researcher recorded the mothers' behavior using a checklist including affection, caring and proximity behaviors, for 15 minutes. The control group received the routine care. The samples were followed up within one and three months after delivery. All statistics were computed by the SPSS software data [version 14] using Chi square and t-tests. The total mean score of affectionate attachment behaviors was 24 and 29 in case group, and 18 and 18 in control group, one and three months after the birth, respectively which showed a significant difference [P=0.001]. The value of proximity behaviors in one and three months after the birth was 18 and 18 in case group and 13 and 18 in control group correspondingly which was a significant difference [P=0.001]. The same value for caring behaviors was 5.9 and 5.7 for case group and 5.6 and 6 for control group which didn't show any significant differences [P=0.2]. It could be concluded that kangaroo method has positive impacts on mother attachment behaviors in long term. So the midwives, who are at the frontline of mother-infant contacts, should be perceptive to this sort of skin to skin contacts and prolong its duration