The Effect of Early Skin-to-skin Contact on Initiation of Breastfeeding, Newborn Temperature and Duration of Third Stage of Labor

Background: Keeping mother and newborn skin-to-skin contact (SSC) after birth brings about numerous protective effects; however, it is an intervention that is underutilized in Iraq where a globally considerable rate of maternal and child death has been reported. The present study was carried out in order to assess the effects of mother and newborn skin-to-skin contact on initiation of breastfeeding, newborn temperature, and duration of the third stage of labor.

Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted on 108 healthy women and their neonates (56 in the intervention group with mother and newborn skin-to-skin contact and 52 in the control group that were provided with routine postpartum care) at maternity teaching hospital of Erbil, Iraq from February to May, 2017. The required data were collected using four instruments. The first instrument was a structured interview to elicit socio-demographic and obstetric characteristics from the participants. The second instrument was a form that was used to assess the duration of the third stage of labor in mothers. The third instrument was a form to record the newborns' axillary temperature. The fourth instrument was the LATCH scale that was employed to assess the success of the first breastfeed.Descriptive relationships between demographic variables and type of care provided for mothers and newborns after birth were explored using means and SD for continuous variables, whilst categorical variables were described using proportions. The relationship between SSC and time to initiate breastfeeding, duration of third stage of labour, success of breastfeeding, newborn hypothermia, and temperature of the newborn 30 minutes after birth were examined using T test and Chi square. In logistic regression model, the effect of SSC and conventional care on outcomes of the study was analysed by adjusting of potential confounders like mother's age, education level, occupation, number of parity, and newborn gender.