The Truth About Kangaroo Care

The biggest lie we're sold about the immediate aftermath of birth is the glowing, serene Instagram photo where the mother, looking dewy and perfectly flushed, delicately holds her pristine newborn to her bare chest. It’s framed as this beautiful, magical bonding moment. Just a sweet little courtesy the hospital provides to make you feel fuzzy inside before they wrap the kid up like a burrito.

That's complete and utter crap.

I know this because it’s 2017, and I'm sitting in a terrifyingly bright NICU room. I'm wearing a hideous mesh underwear contraption and a gray zip-up hoodie with a bleach stain on the left cuff, smelling faintly of iodine and intense panic. Maya was born early. She is hooked up to more wires than a stereo system. And in the corner of the room, my husband Dave is aggressively typing on his custom mechanical keyboard. He brought it to the hospital. Because he's a nervous tech nerd and building keyboards is how he copes with stress. He’s clacking away on these highly specific things called gateron baby kangaroo tactile switches. Yes, literally. He calls them his baby kangaroo switches because they've a "satisfying mid-stroke bump" or whatever. I don't care.

I told him if he didn't stop clicking I was going to throw the entire keyboard out the third-floor window.

Because while he was obsessing over keyboard parts, the neonatal nurse had just marched in, unhooked half of Maya's tiny swaddle, and shoved my two-pound baby k directly inside my bleach-stained hoodie against my bare chest. I was terrified I was going to break her. But the nurse looked me dead in the eye and said I was acting as her incubator now. This wasn't a cute photo op. This was medical protocol.

Why we even call it that

While Dave was busy googling keyboard forums, I was desperately trying to understand what was happening to my body, so I started reading about the actual baby kangaroo name and where this whole practice came from.

I always figured some crunchy mom in California invented it in a yurt. But my doctor actually told me it started in Bogotá, Colombia, back in the late seventies. They had this massive shortage of incubators in the hospitals. Premature babies were literally freezing because they couldn't keep stable their own body heat. So out of pure, desperate necessity, this doctor told the mothers to just strip the babies down to their diapers and strap them directly to their bare chests, skin-to-skin, 24/7. Because bundling a fragile newborn against a warm chest mimics a joey growing inside a pouch, the staff gave it the baby kangaroo name.

And then a crazy thing happened. The babies stopped dying. Like, the survival rates skyrocketed. It turned out the mothers' bodies were better at keeping the babies alive than the actual million-dollar plastic boxes.

Anyway, the point is, it’s not just a cute bonding exercise. It's literal, historical survival.

My boobs are basically smart thermostats

The science behind this is so wild that I’m still not entirely sure I believe it, even though I watched it happen on the hospital monitors.

When Maya was on my chest, her little heart rate monitor would physically slow down and steady out. My doctor said that when you do skin-to-skin, the mother's chest will automatically heat up or cool down by a couple of degrees to match exactly what the baby needs. If the baby is cold, your skin gets hotter. If they've a fever, your chest cools down to act like a biological ice pack.

Which, frankly, sounds like absolute science fiction. I barely understand how to work the thermostat in my own hallway, but apparently, my mammary glands possess advanced thermal sensors. I don't know the exact medical mechanism, but I know that when I held her, her oxygen levels spiked, and my own raging postpartum cortisol levels dropped enough that I could actually take a full breath without crying.

The absolute necessity of emptying your bladder

Here's the part nobody warns you about. You're going to be trapped.

Listen, if you don't pee, grab a lukewarm hospital coffee with a bendy straw, forcefully demand Dave hand you a granola bar, and strategically wedge a pillow under your elbow before the nurse places that baby on your chest, you're going to suffer.

Because once that baby is settled and sleeping, you can't move. You're no longer a human woman. You're a piece of specialized medical furniture. You're a human mattress. If you try to shift your weight to reach your cold coffee, the baby will startle, the monitors will beep, the nurse will glare at you, and the magical oxytocin spell is broken. I once sat for two straight hours with a severe cramp in my left butt cheek because I refused to wake Maya up during a particularly good kangaroo session.

Just wear a hoodie with a zipper, seriously, moving on.

When you finally have to put clothes on them

Eventually, they do let you go home. And eventually, you've to put actual clothes on your baby instead of just letting them live inside your shirt like a stowaway.

This was a nightmare with Maya because her skin was so raw and sensitive from the NICU tape and the monitors. Everything I put on her seemed to leave these angry red marks. I bought so much expensive, useless crap that claimed to be gentle. But the only thing that didn't make her scream was the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao.

I'm generally deeply skeptical of anything marketed as "pure organic," because half the time it feels like a burlap sack and costs fifty dollars. But this bodysuit was incredibly buttery and soft. It didn't have any of those scratchy synthetic tags that dig into the back of their neck. It’s got this stretchy envelope shoulder thing going on, which meant when Maya inevitably had a massive blowout, I could pull the whole thing down over her legs instead of dragging a poop-covered collar over her face. We lived in these. They washed perfectly. I still have them in a box in the attic because I’m emotionally incapable of throwing them away.

If you're building your registry right now, do yourself a favor and browse our organic baby clothes because you really only need a few good, soft basics, not a closet full of stiff denim overalls for a newborn.

It works on giant babies too

When my son Leo was born three years later, he wasn't a tiny NICU preemie. He was a nine-pound butterball who came out looking like a tiny, angry middle-aged man. But we still did kangaroo care.

Except with Leo, the skin-to-skin sessions usually ended with him trying to actively gnaw on my collarbone. He was a drooly, aggressive teether. I ended up having to wedge a Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy between my chest and his mouth just to protect my own skin. It's fine, it works, he liked chewing on the little panda ears, and it kept him from leaving hickeys on my shoulder. It wasn't quite the serene medical miracle I experienced with Maya, but it kept the peace.

Dave still retreats to his office to aggressively type on his weird tactile switches when the kids are screaming. But those quiet hours I spent trapped under my babies, acting as a human radiator, are honestly the only things that kept me sane during the fourth trimester.

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The messy questions nobody answers

Do I seriously have to take my bra off?
Yeah, you do. I tried to cheat and just pull my sports bra down, but my lactation consultant caught me and made me take it off. The whole point is maximum bare skin contact. The baby's skin needs to touch your chest to trigger the hormone release and temperature regulation. Just zip a hoodie up over both of you if you feel exposed.

What if I accidentally fall asleep?
Oh god, this was my biggest fear. You're so tired, the room is warm, the baby is doing that heavy rhythmic breathing—it's a recipe for passing out. My nurses were hardcore about this: DO NOT fall asleep. If you feel yourself drifting, you've to put the baby in the bassinet or hand them to your partner. The risk of them sliding down into an unsafe breathing position is too high.

Is it only for moms?
No! Dave did it too. Obviously, he doesn't have the whole milk-production hormone thing happening, but his chest still helped keep stable Maya's heart rate. Plus, it gave me 45 minutes to go take a hot shower and stare blankly at a wall, which was equally critical for my survival.

How long do you've to sit there?
My doctor said you need to commit to at least 45 to 60 minutes per session. It takes that long for the baby to cycle through their sleep stages and actually get the deep restorative benefits. If you just do it for ten minutes and then get up to check your phone, it defeats the purpose. Hence, the necessity of emptying your bladder first.