Early Mother-Newborn Skin-to-Skin Contact at Term Birth and Early Neonatal Thermoregulation Under Routine Clinical...

Area of Science:

• Neonatal care
• Thermoregulation research
• Maternal-infant bonding studies

Background:

• Early mother-newborn skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is recommended for neonatal physiological stabilization.
• Routine clinical practice often involves brief or interrupted SSC, with less data on its thermoregulation effectiveness.
• This study evaluated neonatal temperature changes during routine care with brief SSC followed by incubation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess early neonatal temperature changes under routine post-birth care.
• To compare temperature regulation between newborns receiving brief SSC and those in a control group.
• To identify factors influencing temperature changes during early post-birth care.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective cohort study of 620 term mother-infant dyads.
• Comparison between a brief early SSC group and a control group without SSC.
• Infant body temperature recorded from birth through early incubation care; analysis of clinical factors.

Main Results:

• No significant difference in overall temperature change from birth to incubation initiation between SSC and control groups.
• Infant body temperature decreased significantly during the SSC period (-0.68 °C ± 0.35 °C).
• A lower proportion of infants in the SSC group (22%) had temperatures below 36.5 °C at incubation start compared to controls (32%).

Conclusions:

• Brief, interrupted SSC was associated with transient neonatal temperature reductions.
• However, brief SSC was linked to a lower incidence of hypothermia compared to immediate incubation.
• Even short durations of skin-to-skin contact may support early neonatal thermoregulation.