A woman holds her premature twin grandsons skin-to-skin. This position helps babies maintain the proper body temperature.<unk>  seeks to provide restored closeness of the newborn with family members by placing the infant in direct skin-to-skin contact with one of them. This ensures physiological and psychological warmth and bonding. The parent's stable body temperature helps to regulate the neonate's temperature more smoothly than an incubator, and allows for readily accessible breastfeeding when the mother holds the baby this way. While this model of infant care is substantially different from the typical Western neonatal intensive-care unit procedures, the two are not mutually exclusive, and it is estimated that more than 200 neonatal intensive care units practice<unk> . One survey found that 82 percent of neonatal intensive care units use<unk>  in the United States. In<unk> , the baby wears only a small diaper and a hat and is placed in a flexed (fetal position) with maximum skin-to-skin contact on parent's chest. The baby is secured with a wrap that goes around the naked torso of the adult, providing the baby with proper support and positioning (maintain flexion), constant containment without pressure points or creases, and protecting from air drafts (thermoregulation). If it is cold, the parent may wear a shirt or hospital gown with an opening to the front and a blanket over the wrap for the baby. The tight bundling is enough to stimulate the baby: vestibular stimulation from the parent's breathing and chest movement, auditory stimulation from the parent's voice and natural sounds of breathing and the heartbeat, touch by the skin of the parent, the wrap, and the natural tendency to hold the baby. All this stimulation is important for the baby's development. "Birth<unk> " places the baby in<unk>  with the mother within one minute after birth and up to the first feeding. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends this practice, with minimal disruption for babies that don't require life support. The baby's head must be dried immediately after birth and then the baby is placed with a hat on the mother's chest. Measurements, etc. are performed after the first feeding. According to the US Institute of<unk> , healthy babies should maintain skin-to-skin contact method for about 3 months so that both baby and mother are established in breastfeeding and have achieved physiological recovery from the birth process. For premature babies, this method can be used continuously around the clock or for sessions of no less than one hour in duration (the length of one full sleep cycle.) It can be started as soon as the baby is stabilized, so it may be at birth or within hours, days, or weeks after birth.<unk>  is different from the practice of babywearing. In<unk> , the adult and the baby are skin-to-skin and chest-to-chest, securing the position of the baby with a stretchy wrap, and it is practiced to provide developmental care to premature babies for 6 months and full-term newborns for 3 months. In babywearing the adult and the child are fully clothed, the child may be in the front or back of the adult, can be done with many different types of carriers and slings, and is commonly practiced with infants and toddlers.
Kangaroo care
Assisted feeding
Morning care
Breastfeeding promotion
Infant bathing
Breastfeeding in public
Ignipuncture
Infant massage