Thoughts on Skin-to-Skin Contact by Pat Gima, IBCLC

Thoughts on Skin-to-Skin Contact

by Pat Gima, IBCLC

I continue to find that skin to skin is the single best way to get baby to the breast. And by skin to skin I don't mean a few hours a day with mom's shirt open and baby's "onesie" off. What I have found, to my continued surprise, is that babies can get too "far away" in the usual American household.

I have had several babies who would not latch happily even though they did it occasionally. If mom is willing, I recommend that she sleep with baby at night, nap with baby during the day, and carry baby either in arms or sling all of the rest of the time. In other words constant contact, as much as possible, against mom's skin. All of this helps milk supply too.

For the moms who do this, all of the babies are happily feeding in a few days. They still need to have plenty of skin time after that, of course. "I can't possibly carry her all day long!" Well, I predict that your baby will be feeding at the breast if you can give her a few days of this remembering who you are.

I "almost" believe that with much less separation of mother and baby I would be out of a job. Oh, there are the usual latch problems, supply problems, and need for CST, but most of my lactation consulting challenges are due, in my opinion, to wanting to put the baby "down" somewhere.

So, I don't think that there is an age after which this cannot work. I have a little 6-week-old boy that I am working with now who has some genetic problems. Mom used CST and we tried all of the techniques that I knew. But when she took a couple of days to hold him skin to skin and to nap with him on her chest, he latched and is feeding well.

I remember the mother who adopted a 1 year old and "wore" him all day and slept with him with lots of skin contact. She had no intention of his going to the breast, but he did. One day while napping with her shirt off and him in his diaper, she awoke to his suckling at her empty breast. She was doing all of this skin stuff for the catch-up bonding but was treated to the surprise of suckling for another year or so.

Back to skin-to-skin resources