Aflevering Raising Resilience #17

In episode #17 we listen to Dr. Nils Bergman, medical doctor and specialist in the field of perinatal care, and especially promotor of Kangaroo Mother Care. This is a form of care with ‘zero separation’ between the tiny, (extremely) prematurely born baby and their mother. It is based on putting the baby skin-to-skin and considering the mother’s chest the locus of care. Nils Bergman has tirelessly worked on gathering scientific evidence and advocating for policies that acknowledge the importance of what he calls ‘nurturescience’, the form of neuroscience that emphasises the vital impact of nurturing baby on mother’s body for the development of healthy psychobiology. As he quotes James McKenna: “Nothing a baby can or cannot do makes sense, except in light of the mother’s body.” When, some thirty years ago, Nils learned about how other mammals behave when they are separated from their mothers, he could suddenly make sense of what he had observed with little human babies. For non-human primates, separation is totally catastrophic and meticulous research has shown beyond doubt now that for human babies there is also significant damage when they lack the safety of their mothers’ bodies. Nils’ work revolves around the fundamental importance of this. With a sense of unsafety, baby will switch off breastfeeding, approaching, and sociality, and focus only on self and survival. When lasting long, physiological ‘states become traits’, for better or worse, and this has lifelong consequences for health and wellbeing, in either direction. That is a message that Nils Bergman will keep sharing with the world: zero separation is a way of not just preventing harm, but of actively doing good for babies. They deserve dedication from supportive adults and a paradigm shift within perinatal care.