Skin-to-skin after a cesarean: Promoting breastfeeding success
Olivia Whalen
Denver school of nursing Skin-to-skin after a cesarean: Promoting breastfeeding success Everyone expecting a child hopes for a the picture perfect labor and delivery followed by the ultimate bonding moment with the baby they’ve been waiting to meet for so long. However, sometimes things don’t go as planned and mom might end up having to get a C-section. This can be very distressing for the parents in many aspects. Having a C-section can keep mom separated from their new baby for hours, missing out on the benefits of early skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding.
Skin-to-skin contact (naked newborn chest down on the mom’s bare chest) with a new baby has a multitude of benefits. It helps with temperature regulation, blood sugar elevation, stabilizing heart/ respiratory rates and breastfeeding, all through the exchange or sensory information between mom and baby (Dekker, 2012). Babies that are kept skin to skin for at least an hour are more likely to latch on well, with little or no help. This is important …show more content…
During the first three months of the intervention they were able to show an increase in early skin-to-skin contact in healthy babies born by cesarean from 20% to 68% and the rate of infants that didn’t receive skin-to-skin contact went down from 40% to 9%. Healthy infants born by cesarean who received skin-to-skin in the OR had lower rates of formula supplementation in the hospital (33%), versus the infants who received skin-to-skin within 90 minutes after birth but not in the OR (42%) (Hung, 2011). Separation between mom and baby after a C-section doesn’t have to be routine even right after the procedure. Mom can provide the right environment for her baby to adapt to the extra-uterine
Olivia Whalen
Denver school of nursing Skin-to-skin after a cesarean: Promoting breastfeeding success Everyone expecting a child hopes for a the picture perfect labor and delivery followed by the ultimate bonding moment with the baby they’ve been waiting to meet for so long. However, sometimes things don’t go as planned and mom might end up having to get a C-section. This can be very distressing for the parents in many aspects. Having a C-section can keep mom separated from their new baby for hours, missing out on the benefits of early skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding.
Skin-to-skin contact (naked newborn chest down on the mom’s bare chest) with a new baby has a multitude of benefits. It helps with temperature regulation, blood sugar elevation, stabilizing heart/ respiratory rates and breastfeeding, all through the exchange or sensory information between mom and baby (Dekker, 2012). Babies that are kept skin to skin for at least an hour are more likely to latch on well, with little or no help. This is important …show more content…
During the first three months of the intervention they were able to show an increase in early skin-to-skin contact in healthy babies born by cesarean from 20% to 68% and the rate of infants that didn’t receive skin-to-skin contact went down from 40% to 9%. Healthy infants born by cesarean who received skin-to-skin in the OR had lower rates of formula supplementation in the hospital (33%), versus the infants who received skin-to-skin within 90 minutes after birth but not in the OR (42%) (Hung, 2011). Separation between mom and baby after a C-section doesn’t have to be routine even right after the procedure. Mom can provide the right environment for her baby to adapt to the extra-uterine