Research during the past 30 years has found many benefits of skin-to-skin contact between mothers and newborns immediately after birth, particularly with aiding breastfeeding. However, in some hospitals, skin-to-skin contact following cesarean birth is not implemented, due to practices around the surgery. A recent Quality Improvement (QI) project demonstrated that women's birth experiences were improved by implementing skin-to-skin contact after cesarean surgery.
Women who give birth by cesarean often have more difficulty with breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin contact can make breastfeeding easier by relaxing the mother and baby, enhancing their bond, and helping the baby to latch better. Additional potential benefits of skin-to-skin contact for infants include less cold stress, longer periods of sleep, improved weight gain, better brain development, a reduction in "purposeless" activity, decreased crying, longer periods of alertness, and earlier hospital discharge.
In "A Quality Improvement Project Focused on Women's Perceptions of Skin-to-Skin Contact After Cesarean Birth", Judith Ann Moran-Peters, RN, NE-BC, BC, and her coauthors write about a QI project to implement skin-to-skin contact following cesarean birth and to measure women's perceptions in contrast with previous cesarean births without immediate skin-to-skin contact. This article appears in the August/September 2014 issue of Nursing for Women's Health, the clinical practice journal of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN).
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