Israeli Hospitals Connect Preemies and Parents Using Scent

Modern medicine has made incredible advances in caring for premature infants, helping even the tiniest newborns overcome tremendous challenges and grow into healthy children. But alongside sophisticated medical interventions, simple gestures of warmth, love, and familiarity can also make a meaningful difference to premature infants.

A new program at Israel’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera that has already been running at other Israeli hospitals is working to provide just this sort of low-tech intervention, JNS reported. An Israeli initiative called Close to the Heart connects preemies isolated in incubators with their mothers, using the power of scent.

This provides better connections between the baby and mother as well as better overall health outcomes for the preemies.

The Power of Scent
Scent is one of the first senses that humans develop, and the smell of a mother can reduce the stress and pain that babies feel. Babies who have access to their mother’s scent tend towards more stable vitals and better health outcomes.

According to Amit Hochberg, the director of the Newborn and Premature Department at Israel’s Hille Yaffe Medical Center, a mother’s fragrance affects babies to this extent because it indicates to an infant that their mother is nearby.

“Closeness to the mother,” Hochberg told JNS, “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.”

Connecting Babies and Mothers
From the moment a baby opens their eyes for the first time and takes their first breath, they already recognize the way their mother smells, having been exposed to the scent in utero, Times of Israel reported.

This familiar smell can comfort both mothers and their infants, occupational therapist Adi Freund-Azaria explained to the Times of Israel. “A mother’s scent,” she shared, “stabilizes her baby’s heart rate, reduces stress, and improves vital signs.”

It was this understanding that led Freund-Azaria, who is herself the mother of a preemie, to develop the Close to the Heart initiative, which debuted at Israel’s Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba and has since spread to Hadera’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center.

The project provides mothers with a soft fabric heart that they can wear against their skin. After the fabric absorbs the mother’s scent, it is placed near the baby in the incubator. In return, the mother receives a flannel heart with her baby’s scent.

Both Mom and Baby Benefit
This initiative benefited moms and babies from the beginning. “Upon launching the program, the transformation was evident right away,” Freund-Azaria explained. “Infants experiencing distress visibly relaxed, their vital indicators achieved stability, and their overall behavioral reactions showed marked improvement.”

Not only did the infants respond positively, mothers participating in Close to the Heart also reported feeling less stressed and more in control. One mother of a preemie, Tal Strassman, recounted how stressful and overwhelming it was to watch her preemie, born at only 650 grams (one pound, seven ounces), recover in an isolated incubator without being able to do anything to help her.

She added that being able to share her scent with her baby helped her feel more in control. “I wore a heart against my skin for a whole day so my scent would absorb deeply into the cloth,” Strassman shared.

“It was then placed inside the incubator next to my daughter, and my scent helped calm her. It gave her an immediate boost. From my perspective as a mother, I felt like that little cloth heart meant the whole world to her. It also gave me a little sense of control in a situation where I felt so powerless.”

JNS adds that not only can this initiative help parents cope with the stress of watching their preemie develop, the scent of the infant can also stimulate the mother to produce oxytocin, the cuddle hormone. Oxytocin reduces anxiety and helps stimulate breast milk production. This is good for both the moms and the preemies.

It’s incredible to see how a simple patch of fabric, alongside more sophisticated medical interventions, can change outcomes for preemies and their parents. This little scented patch acts as a portable heart reminding babies that they are cared for and loved and keeping their moms connected with them even when they are apart.