The Golden Hour
PCRMC Maternity strongly encourages you to consider participating in the Golden Hour following your baby’s birth. The Golden Hour is the hour immediately following the baby’s birth where you hold your naked baby skin-to-skin so you can bond. This helps calm the baby, build up resistance to infection, and get breastfeeding off to a good start. The mother-baby bonding experience right after birth is very important. Newborns and new parents should be treated this way:
- Healthy infants should be placed immediately onto the mother’s abdomen or chest when they are born and remain in direct skin-to-skin contact until the first feeding is accomplished
- The nurse should perform the first physical assessment while the baby remains on the mother’s chest
- Weighing, measuring, bathing, eye ointment and any injections or blood tests should wait until after the first feeding
- The baby should remain with the mother throughout the recovery period
The Golden Hour is as beneficial to you as it is your baby. New moms experience changes in brain chemistry immediately following birth that increases the desire for nurturing. Skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding release hormones that help the cause the uterus to contract, shrink and stop bleeding. Research has shown that having a first breastfeeding within the first hour of life improves infant survival and prolongs the duration of exclusive breastfeeding.
For further information about the Golden Hour, please view the Golden Hour Brochure.