How the Kangaroo Method Helped Increase my Baby’s Weight

By Priyanka - Updated: December 10, 2018

My baby is a preterm baby. She weighed 2.2 kgs at birth. We brought our baby home after spending 11 days in NICU and she weighed 2 kgs. Our main motto, which was given by the doctor, was to increase her weight. He advised a few things to improve her weight – one was to breastfeed her well and more than that, to burp her timely. Without burping her, I was told to not lay her down. The other thing was not to let her cry, as it will be a loss of energy to her. I was also advised to give her towel bath until she reaches 3kg.

I sincerely followed his advice. I fed her breast milk every 2 hours and it used to take half an hour to burp her. When we visited the doctor after 15 days, we crossed our finger when he weighed our baby. But there was very slight weight gain. Then the doctor asked me if I am doing the ‘kangaroo method’? I was shocked, as I listened to the term ‘kangaroo method’ for the first time. My bad luck that the doctor didn’t tell about the kangaroo method while discharging my baby from NICU.

So, I asked him what is the kangaroo method. He explained that female kangaroos have a pouch to carry their babies. They protect them until they become capable of living outside the pouch. In the same way, I have to wrap my baby on my bare chest so that my baby and I have skin to skin contact. This kangaroo method really helps baby to preserve her energy. The energy required to maintain body temperature is supplied by the mother’s skin. This helps in the improvement of her mental health too.

When I held her up closer to me for the first time, she felt so relaxed, she slept well listening to my heartbeat. I felt good cuddling her. Whenever she cried aloud, I used to carry her and hold close the kangaroo style and she used to get calm soon. I followed the kangaroo method every day for 2 hours twice or thrice. When we visited the doctor after 15 days, we were waiting to see her weight. Then we saw that the kangaroo method had really helped. She was weighing 2.8kgs. She reached 3kgs in the next few days. We were happy that now we can give her a good bath.

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