Skin-to-Skin and Optimal Cord Clamping

Skin-to-Skin

I’ll begin with showing you what skin-to-skin looks like between the mother and baby. It is beneficial immediately after birth and throughout infancy.

Benefits include:

• keeps baby warm, especially important in pre term or smaller babies

• calms mother and baby

• regulates baby's breathing and heart rate

• stimulates your baby's feeding behaviour i.e rooting, crawling to breast,

  salivating, mouthing and searching.

• causes oxytocin release which aids the mother's womb to contract and

  controls bleeding immediately after birth

• promotes bonding and a life long loving relationship
  

  Unless absolutely necessary, the baby and mother should be left unhurried and uninterrupted to enjoy their golden hours of skin-to-skin bonding. It initiates breastfeeding and maternity systems procedures should not be a priority over feeding. Once baby has been dried mother and baby should be left to enjoy skin-to-skin for a least an hour or until the mother chooses to end it (Baby Friendly Initiative/BFI UNICEF).

  Delayed Cord Clamping/Optimal Cord Clamping (DCC)

  
  Clamping the baby's cord soon after birth has been a routine practice within hospitals for decades, but new research is proving that this may not be good for baby as they are denied up to 30% of blood (filled with oxygen, nutrients and stem cells) that would have been transfused to them if left to pulsate, which can take up to 5 minutes or longer if there are no acute, immediate health concerns. Usually the Midwife will touch the cord to check when it stops pulsating and the cord will appear white and flat, even in some Caesarean sections.
  Delaying the clamping of the cord is shown to have benefits for the baby, especially premature babies (World Health Organization/WHO) it’s said to;

• increased iron stores, less occurrence of anaemia in childhood

• increased stem cells for their immunity

• better motor skills

• better social skills later in life
  
  Most hospitals should be adopting this as routine practice, but sometimes old habits die hard, so BE SURE to write it in your birth plan and reiterate to your birthing Midwife, especially if they’ve changed shifts.