As I have been telling you on the day of ENCA, very interesting presentations were presented on the delivery care and on the necessary conditions of an emotionally happy birth. Today I bring you the summary of a paper, developed by an EPEN partner, Idoia Armendariz, who discussed the importance of non-mother-baby separation, included in the campaign that Do not Separate You, of which we have already spoken on occasion.
The campaign “Let them not separate you” being carried out by the association El Parto es Nuestro. The objectives of the campaign are three: To improve the attention that newborns receive both during childbirth and after birth, to inform about the rights of children in the hospital setting and to spread the benefits of the Mother Kangaroo Method.
Contrary to the prevailing belief, babies are hotter on the mother than in an incubator or in a crib. It is as simple as leaving them on the mother's skin and covering them with a dry towel, as we explained in a post about the magical effect of the Mother Kangaroo Method. The mother regulates the temperature of the baby by raising or lowering the temperature of the thorax itself. In skin-to-skin contact with the mother regulates your baby's heart and respiratory rate, improves your immune system, reduces your stress levels. The contact itself and the beginning breastfeeding reduces the mother's postpartum bleeding.
Human newborns are born very awake to be able to recognize their mother and feed on her, memorize her smell and seek eye contact. In those moments after childbirth, the hormonal status of both facilitates the mother-child crush and is therefore crucial for the establishment of the bond.
If a healthy baby needs his mother, a premature or sick baby needs his mother even more. It is essential that neonatal ICUs open the doors to parents and that they are informed of how beneficial skin-to-skin contact is for their child. Babies develop better and reduce long-term sequelae for premature babies who practice Mother Kangaroo Method. Fathers and mothers should be part of the team that takes care of these babies.
Mention was also made of the rights of hospitalized children. They have the right to be accompanied by their parents as long as possible. Many of the medical tests can be performed with the presence of the parents, so that the child receives the emotional support they need to overcome the situation. When children are young, it is essential that they be hospitalized together with their mother or father, especially if the baby is nursing.
For all these reasons it is very important that families and hospitals are aware of how essential it is for the physical and psychic health of mothers and babies to stay together whenever possible. To achieve the no mother-baby separation It is necessary to change the protocols and sanitary facilities to fulfill the priority function of offering the best possible care.
