Brielle and Kyrie
Twin girls, Brielle and Kyrie, were born 12 weeks ahead of their due date on 17th October 1995 at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital. Both weighed just two pounds at birth and needed intensive care. They were placed in separate incubators as per hospital policy. Kyrie began to gain weight and her health stabilized. But Brielle was not doing so well.
Three weeks after birth Brielle was having a particularly bad day and the nurse Gayle Kasparian tried everything to calm her. She held her. She had her dad hold her. She wrapped her in a blanket. She suctioned her nose. Nothing worked. Brielle was slowly turning blue and the situation was turning dire with her heart rate soaring and oxygen levels plummeting.
Then she remembered a procedure done in Europe. She went against hospital policy and placed both babies in the same incubator. Almost immediately Brielle snuggled up to Kyrie and Kyrie put her arm around Brielle. Soon Brielle’s blood-oxygen saturation levels, which had been frighteningly low, soared. She began to breathe more easily. The frantic crying stopped and her normal pinkish color quickly returned. Brielle turned the corner.
A newspaper photographer who happened to be in the hospital captured the scene. The picture, known as the “rescuing hug”, became an instant sensation and was published in newspapers around the world. It was also published in Life magazine and Readers Digest. The picture also transformed hospital care of twins and gave a boost to the Kangaroo movement in the west where babies, specially premature or low weight ones, are put in pouches that allow skin-to-skin contact of the baby with the parent. (Kangaroo care was already best practice in countries like Bolivia where it has been credited in helping reduce death rate of premature infants from the 70s onwards.)
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Related:
Story On CNN with latest pictures of the twins now
Kangaroo Care