Israel’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center has introduced a new therapeutic tool intended to help parents of premature babies maintain a connection with their infants during the extended periods of physical separation that hospitalization requires, according to the medical center.
The tool, a small heart-shaped piece of flannel fabric exchanged daily between mother and baby, is part of an initiative called “Close to the Heart,” developed jointly by the hospital’s Occupational Therapy Service, Premature Birth Unit and Textile Division.
Premature babies frequently spend their first days or weeks in incubators connected to monitoring equipment, a period hospital staff describe as difficult for both infants and parents. The new project is designed to address that gap using smell, one of the senses that develops earliest in humans, according to the hospital.
Staff at the hospital in the northern city of Hadera said the concept was adapted from a similar project run at the neonatal and premature intensive care unit of Meir Hospital, led by occupational therapist Dr. Adi Freund Azaria.
The hospital cited research indicating that a mother’s scent can help premature infants stabilize physiological measures such as heart rate, breathing and oxygen saturation, and may reduce stress and pain.
“When mothers go home, the baby is left without the stimuli that are familiar to him. The hearts allow the mother’s scent to remain, which gives him security and calm. It is a simple but powerful tool that reminds the baby that he is not alone, and allows the mother to remain present and enveloping even from a distance,” said Shira Itzhaki Cohen and Noa Shiff, the occupational therapists at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center who are running the project.
According to Dr. Amit Hochberg, director of Hillel Yaffe’s Newborn and Premature Department, “Regular exposure to the mother’s scent acts as a natural painkiller for the premature baby and stabilizes physiological indicators. Closeness to the mother, whether physically or through an intermediary, allows the newborn to move from a survival state to a state of calm even when the parents are not physically present.”
He said the hospital’s staff believe the exchange also affects the mother. “The baby’s scent encourages the secretion of oxytocin, the love hormone, helps reduce anxiety, and even supports the production of breast milk, which is the best medicine and nutrition for premature babies,” said Hochberg. He called the project “small, but extremely important.”
