The baby is already coming out, you feel that all the hours of contractions have been worth it because you can finally hug your baby, the one you have been waiting for for months. A little more, a few more seconds. It's here. Hands hold him firmly and wisely, hands that have held thousands of babies in the same situation. They approach you, your hands and your child, they show it to you, you give it a kiss and they take it to clean, vacuum, weigh, measure, ... Error.
This has happened in Spain for many years, and even now it still happens in some hospitals. However, a few years ago it is recommended to do it in a very different way because it has been seen that if mother and son are well, which is what usually happens in most births, it is best that mother and baby do not know separate, at least not in the first hour, because in addition to affecting breastfeeding and baby temperature it can affect attachment in your relationship.
A few days ago I was told by a partner, a mother a few years ago, that I had gone to a hospital to see the baby of a friend's daughter. As he told me, the baby had spent all day on top of the mother, after birth, with a diaper as the only garment. "Now they must do it that way, it must be something new, because in our times it was very different ...", he told me, and so we began an interesting talk about the before and now.
And it is true, now they do it that way and it is something relatively new, because although there are countries that have been doing it for many years (about thirty years, to be more exact), in Spain, we usually go a step behind, it is now when it seems that the thing is being massively established, and there is still a way to go.
The reasons for not separating the baby right away are diverse: leaving the baby with the mother right after birth is contaminated by the mother and not by others, the establishment of breastfeeding is better, because the baby is willing to do it alone his first shot, but the separation makes it impossible, the baby seems to regulate the temperature better if it is in contact with skin to skin (if it is cold it can consume too much energy and make hypoglycemia), the baby is calmer, less stressed and, among others things, does not lose contact with the smell of mom and mom does not lose contact with the smell and presence of her son.
This smell is important, very important, because the baby is predisposed to "fall in love" with the person he smells the most ... something like animals that think their mother is the first animal they see. Well, the ideal thing for a baby to recognize the mother and feel good about her is that she immediately recognizes the smell and taste she already knows from inside the belly (with the amniotic fluid) on the outside. That is, immediately realize that, despite being somewhere else, still with mom. This way you will be calmer and more willing to crawl for yourself and breastfeed from your mother's chest.
On the other hand, I know it may sound strange, but it has been seen that mothers who are not separated from their babies tend to be more affectionate than those who have been separated. Apparently, those who enjoy non-separation caress the children during the shots and have more moments of eye contact, and this is very positive for mother and child, who still feel united, despite being already separated. This difference is attenuated over time, to the point that some studies find no difference in the treatment at the month of life of the baby (however, there are others in which there is a greater contact between mother and child at the year of life in mothers who were skin to skin with their babies).
I suppose that more than once you will have heard of animals that reject their young because someone washes them and then does not recognize them as their own. It would be something like that, but on a smaller scale, because mothers are usually not guided only by the smell of recognizing their baby. It is enough for them to know that it is theirs to love it, however, some of our animal essence must be lightly touched when someone it snatches our baby and returns it to us minutes later with another appearance and another smell. Think that millennia ago, when we were not so rational beings, mother and baby had to establish a quick link so that the mother decided to protect her baby from the dangers of nature and for the species to continue perpetuating. Now there is not so much danger, but deep down we are still animals.
