Skin-to- hairy chest

Paternal Skin-to-Skin Contact Offers Cesarean-Born Baby Same Calming & Development Benefits As Mom.

We are big fans of skin-to-skin contact in this house. Zen Girl was put on her mom before the cord had even been cut. The two spent a lot of skin-to-skin time together in the recovery room, and continue to do so now. It is amazing how much it can calm her down and help her feed.

I love being skin-to-skin with my infants as well, and in the hospital often held my daughter (and son before) to my bare chest to help calm them.

A new study in the journal Birth:Issues in Perinatal Care shows that when mom is unavailable, contact with dad offers the same benefits.

In a study of 29 father-infant pairs, full-term healthy newborns born by planned cesarean section were randomized to be placed either skin-to-skin on their father’s chest or beside their father in a crib. The infants in the skin-to-skin group stopped crying and were more calm compared to infants in the crib group. A father should therefore be regarded as the primary caregiver for the baby when a mother is not available immediately following a birth.