The Golden Hour
all that glitters is gold
Oct 26, 2025
Happy Sunday - here’s just a little sip! A sip of liquid gold. Grab your emotional support drink to sip on and let’s get into it.
Did you know that not that long ago (read: 1970s), babies were routinely taken from their mothers at birth and only returned for scheduled feedings. It seems counter intuitive to almost immediately separate the mother and a vigorous, healthy baby who was tucked safely inside them for 9ish months.
Especially when that baby’s sole source of nutrition comes from their mothers - they were made to breastfeed.
During the 1980s, Gene Cranston Anderson used a suckometer to measure the strength of newborns’ suck reflex. Many newborns at this time were routinely being separated from their mothers and fasted for 12 hours. I honestly can’t fathom this. But in 1982, she found that sucking was strongest after birth than even a couple hours later (Wambach & Spencer, 2026). Proving that getting the baby to breast as soon as possible is crucial to their success in breastfeeding.
In some areas of the country, we do still have newborn nurseries in the labor & delivery or postpartum units in the hospital where newborns can be taken for further examinations by the medical team, routine newborn testing, and if the parents request. Routine use of these is decreasing and many nurseries are not being used in favor of rooming in. The newborn spends all their time in the room with their parents and all examinations are performed with the parents present.
I know that we have taken birth from a natural event into a medical one. There is a current push for out-of-hospital births and fear-mongering among hospital births.
But I can tell you this is something that so many birth workers, with literature and research on their side, are trying to undo. Nurses, doctors, midwives, nurse practitioners, and others in birth work show up every day and try to do the right thing to support birthing families in the most natural way with safety as their highest priority.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) are professional membership organizations made up of physicians, medical residents, and students. These organizations establish the standard of care and create recommendations based on the most updated evidence-based science. Both of these organizations and the AAP’s Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) recommend all full term infants that are breathing well should be placed skin-to-skin (naked tummy to naked tummy) with their mother immediately after birth and remain together without interruption for at least one hour (Wambach & Spencer, 2026).
That means the universal recommendation is all healthy babies are placed on their mother’s bare skin immediately after birth and remain their for at least their first feeding and up to 2 hours without interruption.
The first hour after birth is so important we call it the golden hour. Disruptions should be limited. Weights, measurements, full assessments can be performed after the first hour. Mom and baby can get to know each other under the watchful eyes of their birth team, while respecting their sacred time together.
The plethora of research we have shows skin-to-skin benefits include:
baby more quickly adapts to life outside the uterus
less crying and stress on baby
improves baby’s blood sugar and temperature - (mother’s body is as effective as a baby warmer in maintain their temperature)
colonizes baby with the mother’s normal flora which helps build baby’s immune system
improves bonding
improves breastfeeding - mom’s sense of self-efficacy and breastfeeding duration
Because we know that the benefits of skin-to-skin with parents is so good that more and more research is being done to push recommendations for increased skin-to-skin care for preterm babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the role delayed cord clamping plays in resuscitation at birth.
With that, I hope you can see that not only is the first hour after birth sacred, but the long and short term benefits from an uninterrupted golden hour are supported by the main professional organizations in the birth communities and backed by science.
Make sure you’re talking to your birth provider about your expectations after delivery. If they are not routinely promoting uninterrupted skin-to-skin, then you can find a better provider who will.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this helpful - if you know someone who might benefit from these nip tips please share!
This episode brought to you by the sounds of Olivia Dean’s “Dive” and me thinking about drinking more water.
(1) Wambach, K., & Spencer, B. (Eds.). (2026). Breastfeeding and human lactation (seventh edition). Jones and Bartlett Learning.
