Orange County, CA - January 23rd, 2019 - For many decades, it is a standard practice to take newborns to bathe just a few hours after the child is born. Heather DiCioccio is a nursing professional development specialist for the Mother/Baby Unit at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital. She led a study that found that waiting to bathe a healthy newborn 12 or more hours after birth increased the rate of breastfeeding exclusivity during the newborns’ hospital stay after she realized that more mothers requested to hold off on the first bath.
"They were reading on mom blogs that it was better to wait to bathe their baby the first time since the amniotic fluid has a similar smell to the breast - which may make it easier for the baby to latch," DiCioccio said.Heather then looked in the method itself and found little to research regarding the subject matter. The study had nearly 1,000 healthy mother and newborn pairs, where 448 babies were bathed shortly after birth and 548 who had a delay.
Results showed exclusive breastfeeding rates increased from 59.8 percent before the intervention to 68.2 percent after the intervention. The newborns in the delayed bath group were also more likely to have a discharge feeding plan that at least included or exclusive to, human milk.
The skin-to-skin time between mother and baby, smell (the similarity in smell between the amniotic fluid and the breast may encourage babies to latch) and temperature, may link the practice of waiting to bathe to the increased rates of breastfeeding."They weren't as cold as the babies who were bathed sooner after birth, so they may not have been as tired trying to nurse. It is now our policy to delay the bath at least 12 hours unless the mom refuses to wait. In that case, we ask for two hours," DiCioccio said.
Breast milk is the best source of nutrition for most babies, and it can also help protect the mother and her baby against illnesses and diseases. The paper was published January 21, 2019, in the Journal for Obstetrics, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing.
