For new moms, nothing is more stressful than hearing their babies cry. The good news is that a new study published in Developmental Psychology says that a daily hour of skin-to-skin contact for weeks after birth is beneficial to moms and newborns as it reduces the baby's crying and improves their sleep.
According to obstetrician Dr. Susan Crowe of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford School of Medicine, placing the baby on the mother's abdomen after birth is scientifically recognized as beneficial for the mother and the baby. For the mom, it helps the uterus contract, reduces bleeding, and warms up the mother. For the baby, it provides comfort, resulting in reduced crying and lower rates of hypoglycemia, per the Stanford Children's Hospital.
The new skin-to-skin contact study
The researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands, led by Kelly Cooijmans, recruited healthy Dutch first-time mothers with full-term infants for their randomized control trial. The new moms knew that they were part of a trial aimed at improving infant crying and sleep, but not what the intervention would be.
The team notes that among the Dutch, prolonged mother-infant skin-to-skin is not part of their culture. One group was instructed to perform "care as usual," a skin-to-skin only after birth.
The other group was asked to ensure their babies had an hour a day of mother-baby contact for five weeks. The mothers were also asked how long their baby cried and slept for the first 12 weeks of the baby's life.
As per Research Digest, in the daily contact group, only 16 of the initial 64 women fully followed the protocol. The mothers said their babies cried less and had shorter individual crying bouts. The new moms reported that they slept longer in the first few days of their lives.
In week 2, the team noted that the baby's crying duration for the moms who fully followed the protocol recorded 106 minutes of daily crying duration, while those who did not do the protocol all recorded 129 minutes of a baby crying. The team noted 23 minutes of less crying per day.
Researchers think that this may be because the soft, warm human touch signals the baby that a caregiver is nearby. The skin-to-skin contact also triggers the release of oxytocin in both the mother and the infant, reducing their stress. As per the research team, the extended skin-to-skin intervention is uncomplicated and low cost.
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Mom's difficulty in extending the skin-to-skin time
The researchers noted that the high drop-out rate suggests that the mothers perceive it to have other kinds of costs. Ten percent (10%) reported having trouble fitting one hour of skin-to-skin into their daily schedules. Fourteen percent (14%) said that their mental or physical recovery made the daily routine difficult to follow, Psycnet. apa reported.
When the women were recruited, there was no evidence that the time they invested in their baby for an hour of skin-to-skin daily would pay off in terms of the baby's reduced crying. The research team hopes the new, preliminary data might encourage the new moms to try the daily protocol.
