Recognizing a Newborn’s Pain
October 18, 2006 by kate baggott
Filed under Baby Care
Can you tell which of the newborn babies above is in pain?
An article in the Technology Review asks that question in its discussion of a new facial recognition software that will help parents and caregivers determine when babies are in pain. The system was developed by Sheryl Brahnam, an information scientist at Missouri State University at Springfield and her team.
How much pain do newborns feel? Does a circumcision feel as bad as fathers think it must? Is colic really a scream-all-night worth sensation?
- Currently, clinicians use “objective scales” of pain indicators for neonates, says Gilbert Martin, director of NICU at the Citrus Valley Medical Center, in West Covina, CA. Such pain scales take into account a variety of factors, including body posture, blood pressure, and sensitivity to touch, as well as facial expression. But there is usually still an element of subjectivity in assessing a patient, he told the Technology Review.
- Until fairly recently, the general consensus was that newborn babies couldn’t experience pain. In fact, until the mid 1990s it was common for infants to undergo surgery without any kind of anaesthetic or pain relief, says Martin. “It’s really terrible to think of,” he says. But the belief was that a newborn’s nervous system wasn’t mature enough to experience pain, he explains.
Thankfully, this new technique is thought to be about 90% accurate.
Not only do newborns feel pain, they also feel emotions, and have opinions and can remember these things. The memory is not mind-based, but is somatic and there are techniques that support the infant, and also adults, to heal and resolve painful experiences (physically and emotionally) that occured very early.
It’s important to do so, since decisions about life, how we relate to others and what we think of ourselves is affected very profoundly by our earliest experiences.
Since newborns feel pain, but may adapt to it more quickly (and adapting is not necessarily a good thing, that’s when decisions are made about self and the world) it’s easy to think they don’t feel it as much.