Kangaroo Unit: favoring the mother-child bond
The kangaroo unit at the Nancy regional maternity ward allows parents of newborns needing non-intensive neonatal care to be hospitalized with the child. “We welcome late premature babies,” explains a childcare worker, or even newborns affected by maternal pathologies such as diabetes. In all cases these are babies who need a little supervision. »
The principle of the kangaroo unit is simple, dads, like mothers, have a bed in the same room as their baby. The hospitalized mother is followed by her gynecologist and midwives, the baby is followed by pediatric nurses, childcare workers and caregivers specializing in neonatology.
“The Kangaroo unit is a sort of link between the maternity ward and the neonatology department,” reveals Valérie Ratajczak, senior health manager at the children’s center of the CHRU. In hospitals that do not have a kangaroo unit, when a mother and baby both need care at the same time, they are often separated. The Kangaroo unit helps avoid this early separation and therefore promotes the parent-child bond.”
