08/12/2025
Sooo true! Skin to skin can often regulate a raised heart and resp rate soon after birth…much nicer than a trip to NICU
There is NO incubator, resuscitaire, warmed cot, doctor or midwife that can do what a mother's chest can......
Early skin-to-skin contact:
✨Helps babies to learn to latch and suckle at the breast.
✨Increases prolactin levels and milk production.
✨Increases the likelihood of exclusive breastfeeding at and after discharge, and the length of the breastfeeding relationship.
✨Stabilises babies physiologically
✨Keeps baby’s warm through thermoregulation and “thermal synchrony”. A mothers chest temperature is around 3 degrees higher than their partners and the temperature l rises and falls depending on baby’s temperature 🤯
✨Kick starts their immune system
Skin to skin beyond the newborn period is a valuable parenting tool throughout infancy and into toddlerhood:
✨Enhances parents confidence, responsiveness and connectedness
✨Reduces the risk of post partum depression
✨Decreases anxiety and increases confidence in dads and non-birth partners
✨Calms babies and toddlers
✨Essential for babies optimal brain development and growth, laying down neural pathways
For premature infants in SCBU or NICU skin-to-skin can be life saving. Also known as "Kangaroo Care", this practice of prolonged skin to skin reduces the risk of death, infection, and low body temperature, while also improving weight gain and breastfeeding rates.
Mothers are quite simply ✨M A G I C✨
Lactation Nurse
www.thelactationnurse.co.uk
