Babies who have skin-to-skin contact with their mother within the first hour of birth are more likely to see a variety of health benefits, according to a study published on Oct 22 (2025).
Skin-to-skin involves placing the naked newborn on the mother’s uncovered chest immediately after birth.
This simple practice helps babies adapt to life outside the womb, keeping them warm, reducing stress and crying, and supporting vital functions such as breathing and heart rate.
The findings, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, show that mothers who have skin-to-skin contact with their babies in the first hour after birth are more likely to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of the baby’s life.
Exclusive breastfeeding brings many health benefits for mothers, babies and health systems.
The newborns also benefit from more optimal sugar levels, body temperature, breathing and heart rate.
Despite guideline recommendations, including from the World Health Organization (WHO), to initiate immediate, uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact until after the first breastfeeding, many health systems still separate mothers and infants during this period.
“Historically, babies have been separated from their mothers immediately after birth for routine procedures such as physical examination, weighing and bathing, preventing immediate skin-to-skin contact,” says study lead author Elizabeth Moore, who is retired from Vanderbilt University's School of Nursing in the United States.
“Even in countries where there is a lot of high-quality care, this free and easy-to-implement intervention is not common practice.”
Study senior author and Healthy Children Project’s Center for Breastfeeding executive director and Lead Faculty Karin Cadwell says: “Withholding skin-to-skin contact would now be considered unethical, as there is enough evidence to show that the practice improves newborn health and survival.
“While the studies eligible for our review did not focus on survival, other research in low- resource settings has shown that skin-to-skin contact can be the difference between life and death in low birth weight infants.
“Recruitment for a large trial across Indian and African hospitals was halted after preliminary data showed that skin-to-skin contact significantly improved survival.”
