Care Through the Newborn's Eyes

Neonatal resuscitation after birth: Swedish midwives' experiences of and perceptions about separation of mothers and their newborn babies

INTRODUCTION

This study aimed to investigate midwives' experiences of and perceptions about mother-baby separation during resuscitation of the baby following birth.

METHODS

A qualitative study was conducted using an author-designed questionnaire. Fifty-four midwives from two Swedish birth units with different working methods regarding neonatal resuscitation - at the mother's bedside in the birth room or in a designated resuscitation room outside the birth room - completed the questionnaire. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS

Most midwives had experience of removing a newborn baby in need of critical care from the birth room, thus separating the mother and baby. The midwives identified the difficulties and challenges involved in carrying out emergency care in the birth room after birth and had divergent opinions about what they considered possible in these birth situations. They agreed on the benefits, for both mother and baby, in performing emergency care in the birth room and avoiding a separation altogether, if possible.

CONCLUSIONS

There are good opportunities to reduce separation of mother and baby after birth; training, knowledge, education and the right environmental conditions are important factors in successfully implementing new ways of working. It is possible to work towards reducing separation and this work should continue and strive to eliminate separation as far as possible.

Study protocol: parents as pain management in Swedish neonatal care - SWEpap, a multi-center randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

During the first period of life, critically ill as well as healthy newborn infants experience recurrent painful procedures. Parents are a valuable but often overlooked resource in procedural pain management in newborns. Interventions to improve parents' knowledge and involvement in infants' pain management are essential to implement in the care of the newborn infant. Neonatal pain research has studied a range of non-pharmacological pain alleviating strategies during painful procedures, yet, regarding combined multisensorial parent-driven non-pharmacological pain management, research is still lacking.

METHODS/DESIGN

A multi-center randomized controlled trial (RCT) with three parallel groups with the allocation ratio 1:1:1 is planned. The RCT "Parents as pain management in Swedish neonatal care - SWEpap", will investigate the efficacy of combined pain management with skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding and live parental lullaby singing compared with standard pain care initiated by health care professionals, during routine metabolic screening of newborn infants (PKU-test).

DISCUSSION

Parental involvement in neonatal pain management enables a range of comforting parental interventions such as skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, rocking and soothing vocalizations. To date, few studies have been published examining the efficacy of combined multisensorial parent-driven interventions. So far, research shows that the use of combined parent-driven pain management such as skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding, is more effective in reducing behavioral responses to pain in infants, than using the pain-relieving interventions alone. Combined parental soothing behaviors that provide rhythmic (holding/rocking/vocalizing) or orogustatory/orotactile (feeding/pacifying) stimulation that keep the parent close to the infant, are more effective in a painful context. In the SWEpap study we also include parental live lullaby singing, which is an unexplored but promising biopsychosocial, multimodal and multisensory pain alleviating adjuvant, especially in combination with skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov ( NCT04341194 ) 10 April 2020.