Upon birth, the baby is subjected to medical procedures that, although often minimized or believed to be unable to feel pain, cause pain. Research in recent years has shown that children born at term or preterm have a physiological and hormonal response to similar pain, and often exaggerated, if we compare it with that of older children and adults.
That is why non-drug forms of analgesia are sought to relieve the pain of newborns and infants in the face of painful procedures. In light of the tests carried out in the last 20 years with different techniques to reduce pain caused by heel testing and vaccinations, oral sucrose solutions and, above all, breastfeeding lessen pain moderately.
When comparing different techniques applied to babies while having procedures such as giving them dilutions of sucrose with placebo, breastfeeding, formula milk intake, non-nutritive suction or containment maneuvers, they have found that sucrose solutions, and especially tetanalgesia , term coined to refer to the calming effect that babies have to be breastfed, are the most effective non-pharmacological techniques to relieve pain in babies
We talked about interventions of very low cost and without side effects, which would be desirable to begin to implement breastfeeding systematically to reduce the pain produced by the heel test and vaccinations during the first year of life. And in case of babies who do not drink breast milk, sucrose solutions.
We should not underestimate the pain that babies can feel before these procedures (let's think that as soon as they arrive in the world they begin to be punctured), therefore anything we can do to suffer a little less will be welcome.
