Tiny, helpless and extremely fragile is how a premature born baby looks like when it comes into the new world. Preterm infants were often taken to incubators and this caused a distress for both the mother and the baby since they were often separated for long.

The new preferred system, "Kangaroo Mothercare,” has come with more than mere advantages.

The system, Kangaroo Mothercare, was developed in Colombia in the 1970s; it consists of continuous 24 hours per day, seven days per week and prolonged mother or parent-infant skin-to-skin contact.

Hospitals in Rwanda have adapted to the system and this has helped save lives.

Beatrice Uwineza had a preterm birth at Muhima Hospital late last year and thought her life and that of her baby was about to end. But with the Kangaroo method, the mother and baby share smiles of bonding today.

The complications started when she was six-and-a-half months pregnant, started having regular headaches and her whole body started swelling. Little did she know that the issue would turn out to be an emergency and that she would end up in a theatre and have her baby only at seven months.

"The doctor told me I had hypertension and that if I waited for the nine months, my life and that of the baby were in great danger,” Uwineza says.

"I was operated on and the baby was taken into incubation first because she was so tired, had a breathing problem and was only fed through a tube. After two weeks, we started the method of Kangaroo Mothercare.”

Premature babies lose weight drastically if not attended to in the right way.

Uwineza says that Kangaroo Mothercare method mostly helps in increasing the baby’s weight and strengthening her, it was only a week of using kangaroo care and the baby had added more 300 grammes.

She was then discharged from hospital and continued the method from home.

How to live with it

"With the method, you gently tie the baby from your chest, holding her skin-to-skin; with this she gets to receive the mother’s natural warmth and affection. The doctors told us the baby grows well with the method.

"From morning the baby is on the chest, I only remove her when I am going to breastfeed her, after that I bathe her and put her back on the chest. It’s only when I am tired that I put her to bed for a few hours, but at all hours she is always on the Kangaroo method.

"For domestic work, I have a house-help. I only put the baby down when I am either going to eat, to the bathroom and or do a simple chore. But when we were still at the hospital she was always on the chest, which was tiring but luckily, my husband also helped; he always came to the hospital and also held our baby the kangaroo way for hours.

"What amazed us was the fact that when her father held her, she grew faster than when I did, reason being that according to the doctors, it’s the father with more warmth than the mother.

"Our baby is now healthy and the hours we spend holding her are now reducing because she is now grown up. The method is very tiring, you get backaches but it’s all worth it and I would recommend other mothers to sometimes do it even when the baby was born normally, it’s really great for both the baby and the mother.

"Joanna Ineza is now a healthy nine-month-old baby. It was indeed a painful process, I felt like my life was ending but God worked out a miracle for us.”

Nkomezi Freddy, Uwineza’s husband, is more than grateful seeing that his wife and baby are both in a healthy state.

"Depending on how the situation was, my wife was in great danger. When I saw her being wheeled into the operation room, I wasn’t sure I would ever see her again because for the baby I thought we had already lost her,” he said.

"God amazingly answered my prayers and they both came out fine, we had to nurture the baby through Kangaroo Mothercare, which required me to request for a leave from work so as to help my wife with the baby. I encourage other men to support their wives because honestly in such situations they need both physical and emotional support,” Nkomezi added.