With only about 9 weeks until our third child is due, I’m starting to think once again about everything that comes along with a new baby. At a recent birth preparation class, the instructor encouraged us to look up the evidence about holding your baby skin-to-skin immediately after he or she is born.
It turns out, the evidence is pretty convincing. A systematic review published by the Cochrane Collaboration last year evaluated 34 randomized studies involving more than 2,000 mothers and babies on the benefits of placing a new baby on the mother’s bare skin immediately after birth.
The reviewers found that babies exposed to skin-to-skin contact interacted more with their mothers and cried less than babies who were separated from their mothers to be swaddled or dressed first. Mothers who held their newborns skin-to-skin were more likely to breastfeed in the first one to four months and tended to breastfeed longer. And babies showed better stability in their heart and breathing rates.
While there were clearly positive effects, researchers concluded the need for additional studies on this topic because there was variation in how the intervention was implemented, including the time at which skin-to-skin contact started after the birth, how long it lasted, and how the outcomes were measured.
The take-home message: Encouraging skin-to-skin contact for newborn babies and their mothers is clearly beneficial. It’s certainly something I plan to do when my new little one arrives.
Then, one chilly winter night, Farquhar decided to have a bath with Ryan in hopes of warming them both up. “I held him in my arms in the warm water. On his own, he decided that he wanted to nurse right there in the tub.” Ryan snuggled against her, latched on beautifully and, Farquhar says, “filled his belly.” While day-to-day feedings were still sometimes challenging, Farquhar found that Ryan would always nurse well when they were skin to skin in the bathtub. “I am not sure who enjoyed it more—me or him,” she says.