What is the need to clean, apply vaccines or measure the baby right after birth? There will be time for these routine practices if the delivery has been uncomplicated, because of course The first hour of life is sacred to the baby and the mother. Nothing is more important than that moment of skin-to-skin contact between them.
This is what Dr. Constanza Soto Conti explains, a medical doctor at the Argentine Maternal and Child Hospital Ramón Sardá, who also adds: "Skin-to-skin contact between the mother and her child stabilizes the baby's breathing and oxygenation, maintains her levels of glycemia, stabilizes blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, reduces crying, increases calm alertness, promotes early onset of breastfeeding, and maintains temperature, reducing the risk of hypothermia. "
The importance of early contact
The first sixty to ninety minutes after delivery, there is even talk of the first two hours, are many more transcendent than usually believed. Is a especially sensitive period in which early contact between the mother and the baby has both immediate and long-term positive effects.
At that time it is established what is known as affective imprint which favors the link between the two and the establishment of breastfeeding. Early breastfeeding, initiated in the first hour of life, is key to successful breastfeeding.
During birth and after hours, the mother and baby hormones work by creating synergy. The mother has an important oxytocin discharge and the baby is especially receptive. So much so that if the baby is left naked on the mother's chest, this scent is guided by the smell until the mother's breast is found and fed, it is known as breastcrawl.
A sacred moment to recognize yourself
It is a state of calm conscience, of recognition between the two, contact, smell and touch that should not be interrupted by unnecessary interventions, not even by cutting the cord, since you can wait for it to stop beating on its own.
Before it was believed that the baby had to be held at the mother's uterus to prevent anemia, explains the doctor, and of course, the baby was terrified, but "today we know that driven by contractions of the uterus, blood flows perfectly if we put it on his mother's chest. "
Routine practices such as the first vaccines, measurements and cleaning of the baby can be performed on top of the mother while breastfeeding or caressed, they can even wait until after two hours after delivery, since cleaning the baby immediately does not make sense . The smell of the newborn baby also produces an imprint on the mother's brain.
Long-term effects
The effects of this early contact in the first hours of life are also positive in the long term. It favors the emotional relationship, the self-regulation of babies, and the reciprocity between them, at least during the first year of life.
According to Dr. Conti:
"Those initial minutes are a sensitive period during which close contact between the mother and the healthy newborn can have positive long-term effects, such as greater safety and better tolerance to separation distress."
Also in case of caesarean section
The doctor advocates facilitating early contact also in the case of babies born by caesarean section, because as we have commented on the blog on occasion, babies born by caesarean section would also have to stay in skin-to-skin contact with the mother.
In many hospitals, after the caesarean section the mother stays those two precious hours in resuscitation separated from her baby when they are physiologically prepared to be united, they need each other.
Of course this is not ideal and is one of the practices to improve in childbirth care, since it is not an operation like any other. It should be controlled but allow you to be with your baby and your partner, and if any complication arises after caesarean section, which in most women does not happen, have the means to act immediately.
