Skin-to-Skin

Skin -to-skin contact  is a method of caring for newborn babies that involves putting the newborn on the mothers' chest skin-to-skin. Skin-to-skin contact and Kangaroo Mother Care can contribute much to the care of the premature baby. Even babies on oxygen can be cared for skin to skin, and this helps reduce their needs for oxygen, and keeps them more stable in other ways as well.

Your bare chect is the best place for your baby to adjust to life outside the womb. Your baby smells you, hears you, feels you and gets to know you.

When babies are held skin-to-skin after birth, data shows that they are:

• Hap­pier. A baby fusses less and is less agi­tated when placed naked (not wrapped in a blan­ket) on the mother’s chest imme­di­ately after birth, as well as later in the recov­ery room. (If the room is chilly, a blan­ket can be draped over both mother and baby.)
• More sta­ble. A mother’s body helps to reg­u­late her baby’s tem­per­a­ture, heart and breath­ing rate, and blood sugar level.
• More likely to breast­feed. The first hour or two after birth is usu­ally a quiet but alert time for a new­born, and many babies intu­itively “crawl” to their mother’s nip­ple and latch on with lit­tle or no help. This laid-back posi­tion allows you to use your hands to guide your baby, sup­port him, or express a few drops of colostrum to draw his atten­tion to the breast.