A human baby is born totally helpless. It needs its mother to survive: her food, her arms, her body, her temperature, her sound, her presence. When babies lie on their mother’s body, they feel safe, know they are protected, and can relax. Today, we talk about skin-to-skin contact, which sounds like medical treatment but is what humanity has been replicating throughout its existence as part of our survival strategy as a species.

What is the Mother Kangaroo Method?

Skin-to-skin contact was routinely established as a care method for premature babies 1979 at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. It was based on the so-called “Mother Kangaroo Method”, which consisted of placing the newborn skin-to-skin with their mother, if possible 24 hours a day.

This “small” decision proved to have multiple advantages over traditional routines of keeping the baby in the incubator and results demonstrated this by reflecting increased survival rates of babies and decreased illness rates.

We have had to wait for scientific evidence to tell us that the best for any baby is its mother and immediate contact with its body after birth. Healthy, full-term babies are still immature creatures who need the care of an adult to thrive.

All senses are concentrated on breastfeeding

When a baby is born, they are ready to breastfeed. It is vital that they succeed, because their survival biologically depends on it. So they are born with all their senses alert:

Smell: This ability allows them to distinguish the smell of their mother, which they prefer to any other smell. This sense is especially powerful and sensitive in the first hours of life.

Taste: babies are able to recognize the taste of their mother’s colostrum, which tastes the same as the amniotic fluid. They prefer this to any other flavor, whether it is another mother’s breast milk or formula milk.

Sight: this is the most limited sense at birth, but they are able to recognize faces and even reproduce facial expressions. They see dark colors more easily, which is why it is believed that the areola gets darker so that newborns can see very clearly where the food is.

Hearing: They can recognize a mother’s voice and prefer it to any other sound or music. In fact, if a baby is placed between two people and the two people talk to the baby and call them at the same time, the baby will turn its head towards its mother’s voice.

Touch: the baby responds to getting touched, at both pain and pleasure, and also responds to the temperature of the mother’s body.

When a baby is born, they need very few elements to survive: warmth, love, food and social interaction. All of this is built into a mother’s body and care.

The first contact: skin-to-skin and the golden hours

All mammals display a sequence of behaviours and actions aimed at initiating and maintaining nursing, and human babies are no different. During birth, norepinephrine hormones are released, activating the baby. This release keeps them active for 2 hours, the so-called “sensitive period” or golden hours following. Healthy full-term newborns spontaneously latch on to the nipple and start breastfeeding for approximately 55-70 minutes after birth.

The following pattern can be observed in newborns immediately after birth:

• Once placed on their mother’s tummy, the newborn baby enters a state of calm alert, marked by attention and concentration.
•  They start to suck their hands and taste the remaining amniotic fluid that reminds them of what they have to look out for. Their sense of smell helps them to find colostrum, which smells exactly the same.
• They begin to pull themselves, nearly crawl: driven by their desire to reach the breast, they begin to make crawl-like movements, pushing themselves forward with their legs.
• Head elevation: she raises her head and nods, almost similar to a woodpecker in search of the nipple.
• Crying: they may become a little restless halfway through and may look tired.
• Licking: they stick out their tongue and produce saliva which triggers the gastric hormones.
• Stimulation of the search reflex: when the baby reaches the breast and touches the nipple with the cheek, they open their mouth to try and latch.
• Nipple encounter: finally, they find the nipple and latch on.
• Start of sucking motions: the newborn baby starts sucking immediately.
• Eye contact with mother: while breastfeeding, they will look for their mother’s eyes.

Skin-to-skin contact with the mother is a natural continuity of the well-being they enjoy inside their mother’s womb: a thermally stable environment with continuous feeding where they can hear their mother’s voice and feel her heartbeat.

Newborns placed immediately on their mother’s breast or allowed to make their own searching movements and latch onto the breast themselves are more likely to achieve successful breastfeeding journeys. Most routine checks can be performed while the baby is on the mother’s body, and those that are not can be postponed for a few hours.

Research has shown that this first contact during the golden hours is so important that it is worth postponing all other postpartum routines, such as washing the mother and the baby, weighing the baby, and so on, to establish the mother-child bond. Nothing that is not a matter of life or death is that important to interfere with these precious moments.

Skin-to-skin recommendations by WHO

The mother kangaroo method

Do you have any more questions?

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