Historical background to maternal-neonate separation and neonatal care

Maternal-neonate separation after birth is standard practice in the modern obstetric care. This is however a relatively new phenomenon, and its origins are described. Around 1890, two obstetricians in France expanded on a newly invented egg hatchery as a method of caring for preterm newborns. Mothers provided basic care, until incubators became part of commercial exhibitions that excluded them. After some 40 years hospitals accepted incubators, and adopted the strict separation of mothers from babies observed at the exhibitions. The introduction of artificial infant formula made the separation practical, and this also became normal practice rather than breastfeeding. Incubators and formula were unquestioned standard practices before randomized controlled trials were introduced, and therefore never subjected to such trials. The introduction of Kangaroo Care began 40 years ago in Colombia, now as a novel intervention. Recent trials do in fact show that maternal-neonate separation is detrimental to mothers and babies. Recent scientific discoveries such as the microbiome, epigenetics, and neuroimaging provide the scientific explanations that have not been available before, suggesting that skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding are defining for the basic reproductive biology of human beings.