Soothing a crying baby might be the last thing you think of when it comes to parental stress relief
It doesn’t exactly sound like a relaxing activity for, well anyone, especially when your little one is undergoing a potentially painful procedure.
New research by the Neuroimaging Group, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health and Pain has found proof of the positive impact that being involved in their baby’s care has on parents.
The group carried out an experiment called the Parental touch trial or Petal for short, which was aimed at trying to figure out if touch from a parent during the heel prick test would do anything to provide pain relief to babies.
While there was no difference in the babies’ brain, behaviour or heart rate response to pain regardless of whether the parent touched their baby before or after the painful procedure, the findings did demonstrate that the majority of parents had more positive emotions when involved in their child’s care.
Many of the parents involved in the study said they felt useful and more reassured.
On top of this, the researchers found that there was an overall decrease in parental anxiety after their participation.
As a result of their findings, the Neuro-imaging Group in collaboration with Bliss, the charity for babies born premature or sick, has launched a new suite of information resources.
The aim of this new collection of videos is to help make parents of newborns feel more confident about being involved in the care of their babies.
Dr Rebeccah Slater, Professor of Pediatric Neuroscience and Senior Wellcome Fellow at the Neuro-imaging Group spoke about the research and said: “Working with parents, babies and health care professionals to better understand how we can support premature and sick babies during painful procedures has been a highlight of my career.
“Developing these resources with Bliss has placed families at the heart of all the research we do, and has directly improved our engagement with families and the quality of our research.
“We will continue to find new ways to support parents and their babies when painful procedures form an essential component of neonatal care.”
Dr Roshni Mansfield, a paediatrics trainee and NIHR academic clinical fellow in the Pediatric Neuroimaging Group said: “The Petal trial has highlighted the importance of involving parents in the provision of care and comfort for relieving their child’s pain.
“Future studies can build upon the insights gained from this trial including the positive parental experiences observed in this study.”
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