OBJECTIVES The goals of this study were to assess: (a) the involvement of fathers and mothers in overall and nighttime infant caregiving; (b) the links between paternal involvement in infant care and infant sleep patterns during the first 6 months. METHODS Fifty-six couples recruited during their first pregnancy, participated in the study. After delivery (1 and 6 months), both parents complet...

OBJECTIVES Kazakhstan's live-birth definition--that dates from the former Soviet Union (FSU) era--differs from that used by the World Health Organization (WHO). We studied the impacts of both live-birth definitions on the computations of the infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal and child health (MCH) planning in Zhambyl Oblast, Kazakhstan. METHODS We interviewed caregivers and abstracted ...

OBJECTIVE To test whether utilization of infant preventive care services has reduced utilization of inpatient care and to determine whether implementation of Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) has brought about any differences in the utilization of infant health care services. DATA SOURCES Data were taken from the 1989 and 1996 National Maternal and Infant Health Surveys (NMIHSs). In to...

AIMS To characterise the first infants receiving continuous Kangaroo Mother Care from birth to discharge in a Swedish neonatal intensive care unit and to investigate their mothers' experiences of this model of care. BACKGROUND Admission of a newborn infant to a neonatal intensive care unit commonly implies separation of the new mother from her infant. Kangaroo Mother Care is a model of neonat...

BACKGROUND Infant mortality has shown a steady decline in recent years but a marked socioeconomic gradient persists. Antenatal care is generally thought to be an effective method of improving pregnancy outcomes, but the effectiveness of specific antenatal care programmes as a means of reducing infant mortality in socioeconomically disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of women has not been rigoro...

background: in recent years significant medical science advances have been made in the field midwifery and infant care. the premature, low birth weight and ill infants are admitted to the technologically advanced nicu for care and they often require long‑term stay. this study addresses parental experiences with the infant care in nicu, explores their concerns regarding nursing supports for pare...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of kangaroo care on heart rate variability in a healthy preterm infant. DESIGN Case study. SETTING Private room on a postpartum unit. PARTICIPANT A mother-preterm infant dyad. INTERVENTION Kangaroo (skin-to-skin) care. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Heart rate variability, a noninvasive measurement of the sympathetic and parasympathetic components of the autonomi...

UNLABELLED In this paper, we highlight the need for acknowledging the importance and impact of both physical and emotional closeness between the preterm infant and parent in the neonatal intensive care unit. Physical closeness refers to being spatially close and emotional closeness to parental feelings of being emotionally connected to the infant (experiencing feelings of love, warmth and affec...