During the 1970s the first suggestions arose that skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby might be beneficial. Dr Chateau, Dr Klaus and Dr Kennel described how ‘’extra care’’ was beneficial, particularly to the relationship between the mother and baby, now known as maternal-infant bonding. It was in 1981 that the term Kangaroo Mother Method was first coined by Dr Rey and Dr Martinez from Bogota, Columbia. In their large hospital with many preterm births and without sufficient facilities to care for them all, they used this method out of necessity and found that they could send small preterm babies home with their mothers. The mortality (death) rate of preterm babies treated with KMC was lower than those without. Their findings prompted calls for further research (Whitelaw and Sleath in 1985) and the first trial to test KMC as a treatment was published by Whitelaw in 1998. This method was then termed as ‘Kangaroo Mother Care’ at a meeting in 1996 with representatives from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Subsequently, the trials have been put together into a Cochrane Review (Conde‐Agudelo 2016) and into a bibliography of all KMC research up to 2017 (Ludington’s KCBIB). The accumulation of this body of research shows that there are very important benefits that the traditional incubator cannot mimic.