An increasing amount of research in recent years shows growing interest and understanding of the importance of skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after birth.
Healthy Children Project’s Dr. Kajsa Brimdyr has been researching and advocating for the practice of skin-to-skin for many years. She recently presented findings from four recent papers as part of New Zealand Women’s Health Action’s Virtual Big Latch On 2020, as part of World Breastfeeding Week. The papers include:
- The nine stages of skin‐to‐skin: practical guidelines and insights from four countries
- A plausible pathway of imprinted behaviors: Skin-to-skin actions of the newborn immediately after birth follow the order of fetal development and intrauterine training of movements
- The effect of labor medications on normal newborn behavior in the first hour after birth: A prospective cohort study
- Skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after birth, underlying implications and clinical practice.
In honor of World Breastfeeding Week, we are excited to announce that Health Education Associates has made this talk available as an online video module, and it is free through the month of August! The module can be completed to earn 0.5 contact hours. You will have 6 months to begin and 6 months to complete it. The module condenses a great deal of information into a half-hour-long video, giving a summary of its many benefits and addressing different facets of the practice, including how hospitals can begin truly implementing the practice, how choices in pain management can affect the success of immediate skin-to-skin, best practices during skin-to-skin contact, observations of similar behaviors in utero, and a look at how the practice is implemented in different areas of the world.
As an added bonus, the video offers a sneak peek at Dr. Brimdyr’s upcoming film, The 9 Stages in Premature Infants.
Happy World Breastfeeding Week!