Pain in the Neonate
It was once a common thought among some (often more western) cultures that children didn't feel pain before the age of 3, or if they "felt" the pain, they didn't remember it so it didn't matter anyway. This belief has persisted throughout many, many generations and our current medical model of care often manages to ignore the important fact that unborn and newborn babies DO feel pain. As for "remembering", we may not be able to recollect the things that happened to us in our infancy, but that doesn't mean they aren't a part of our unconscious thoughts, foundational behaviors, and cellular memory. An article from Science Daily addresses recent research about painful procedures being performed on newborns in ICU's (this article is addressing research conducted in Paris, but our procedures are very similar), particularly how many procedures newborns undergo and that some of these are performed without any pain medication. It is important to kno...