Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a birth doula, hypnobirthing educator, and pediatric sleep consultant.

Samantha is a birth doula, childbirth educator, and lactation counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.

All right, so we already covered the Golden Hour from the parent's perspective, and today we're going to talk about what it looks like from the baby's perspective.

Samantha, start us off.

What do we need to know?

You need to know everything.

So let's talk about some of the things.

So first thing that happens when your baby is born is your baby comes out and they are still attached to you via their umbilical cord.

So baby is born and they might go wherever they're gonna go to mom's chest or maybe the doctor is holding them.

We'll talk about that in a minute as well.

But they are still connected to that cord.

So in the past, it used to be that as soon as baby came out, they would put a clamp on the cord and then they would cut the cord pretty quickly within 30 seconds of life.

We have discovered in recent years that this is not really indicated that about 30% of the baby's blood is still in the cord and the placenta after birth.

So that's a significant amount of blood that's in the cord.

So in, I forget what year it was, but in the last like 10 to 20 years, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recently recommended that we delay cord clamping by about 30 to 60 seconds.

And so that is what they recommend is delaying cord clamping by at least 30 to 60 seconds after birth.

So that means they kind of let that cord pulsate.

As baby is like crying and screaming and clearing out their lungs, they are pulling that blood up through the cord into their bodies.

Babies that are not crying and screaming as much as they should are not pulling quite as much of that blood, which means that they are continuing to get the oxygen that's in the blood through their bodies.

So allowing the babies to still be attached to the cord is going to help them to stay oxygenated during any sort of help that they're receiving at that point in time.

So something we see all the time too with if a baby is struggling when they're first born is struggling to come around with breathing.

I've heard doctors say like we need to cut the cord.

We need to get, you know, go help the baby.

And it's like the best place for the baby is skin to skin with mom, which we'll go over.

And having that cord still connected.

And we have people all the time too that will say, Oh, my provider said that they already do delayed cord clamping, but you have to get a definition of what that means.

What is delayed cord clamping?

Yeah.

What does that mean to them?

What is delay?

Just like what is overdue?

There are so many questions you have to ask.

But I love on The Midwife's Cauldron, I've got to shout them out.

She's like, it's not delayed cord clamping, it's optimal cord clamping.

And anything that's done before the cord turns white and is limp means it is premature cord clamping.

And that's basically what I teach now in childbirth classes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So evidence and research shows that typically the cord is going to stop pulsating, which so if you were to feel the cord right after the baby is born, you're still going to feel a pulse moving through it.

So if you were to sit there and hold that cord to know when it stops pulsating, that's typically going to happen at about the three minute mark.

So that would be closer to what we would consider that optimal cord clamping, where there's really no more blood that's continuing to move through the cord to the baby.

It's stopped pulsing and baby has gotten everything that they are going to get from the cord and the placenta.

However, when a lot of places are talking about delayed cord clamping, they're talking about that 30 to 60 seconds.

And I hear provider, you know, just like Ciarra said, I hear providers like, oh, yeah, that's our standard of care.

But they're talking about a 30 second delay.

So if you are wanting that optimal cord clamping, which means baby is getting as much of that blood as possible, we're looking at closer to three to five minutes, sometimes longer if baby's, you know, just not quite as loud as other babies.

So why do we care?

Why does it matter if baby gets that blood?

So there's a few reasons why.

One is because getting all of that blood is going to provide them with sufficient iron reserves for the first six to eight months of life.

So babies aren't getting a lot of iron from your breast milk.

And so what they get in pregnancy is kind of what has to hold them over until they start getting supplemental nutrition through like baby food and things like that.

Or you have to give them additional iron with iron drops.

So if you are delaying the cord clamping, you are making sure that they're getting enough iron to last them until they are going to be able to start eating the broccoli and the spinach and all those other things that they might be eating when they are at that six months of age where we start introducing some other foods.

And this is why we see that formulas are often fortified with iron.

And moms that choose to breastfeed are sometimes doing those iron drops, but you don't need as much supplementation if you have delayed, or sorry, optimal cord clamping.

There was also a study done, I don't know if you've heard of this, Samantha, where they followed babies or children from birth through kindergarten and they tested to see babies that had just immediate cord clamping versus delayed cord clamping.

And that wasn't optimal, it was just delayed cord clamping.

I think it was for one minute.

They followed them through kindergarten to see what difference it made.

And pretty across the board, the children had delayed cord clamping, had almost no incidence of anemia in, so not enough iron, in kindergarten.

It sustained them for longer than that eight months.

And their bodies were able to continue, not sustained them, right?

But like it helped them set off on the right foot and continue on that foot.

Now, the babies that had immediate cord clamping, there was a lot of anemia in that group.

And it was to the point where it was like, okay, this is correlation, you know?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Anemia is something that happens worldwide.

And they say about 42% of those cases of anemia that are happening worldwide are happening because they don't have sufficient iron reserves in infancy.

So it's definitely really important to consider that when you're talking about cord clamping.

The other thing is that it can increase their hemoglobin levels.

So babies who have delayed cord clamping, if they are like a premature baby, meaning they're born before that, like 37, 36 week mark, they're gonna have sufficient hemoglobin reserves at hemoglobin levels by 10 weeks.

And babies who are term are going to have those, meaning they're born when they're supposed to be, they're gonna have those sufficient hemoglobin levels at, what is it?

I wanna make sure I have it right.

Improves hemoglobin levels at two to four months of age.

So, it's improving those things, which are really important for babies as well.

There have been studies in the past that have talked about how delayed cord clamping leads to higher instances of jaundice, which is where babies have increased bilirubin in their blood.

So, babies are born with a high level of that.

And then as they go through life in those first couple of days, they start peeing and pooping out all of that extra bilirubin.

And so, there were some studies that said, or there was a study that said that jaundice levels were higher in babies who had delayed cord clamping.

However, when the research was looked at further, they found that the study that found that was not able to be replicated, meaning they couldn't make those results happen again.

And they found that it was just kind of a low quality study.

So, a lot of researchers are saying that we really shouldn't be taking that as kind of the golden rule with this.

It's kind of lower level evidence basically.

So, that's something to think about.

We also shouldn't compare babies that had optimal cord clamping to babies that had premature cord clamping.

We shouldn't even compare their numbers because of course babies that had all of their blood come into their body or the majority of it, their bodies have to process more blood.

Therefore, they would have more bilirubin and they process it out as well.

But also they have higher instinct to nurse or to feed after birth because they have more energy because they have more of their blood pumping through their body.

So, they're more likely to latch and then pull that from mom, pull all that colostrum, and then also have their parents' milk come in more soon because they're giving that demand to the mom or the parent.

And then you're getting that bilirubin out of your body faster because the more intake, the more output, and then we're getting rid of it.

So, this isn't such a huge risk versus reward here.

There are high rewards to this optimal work life.

So, if you are thinking about having, wanting to advocate for delayed cord clamping or optimal cord clamping in your birth, some things that people say when they're talking to their providers about that is, I want to wait until the cord stops pulsating, or I want to wait until the cord turns white.

And we found that in the majority of cases, providers are fairly comfortable with this.

It's a pretty common request at this point.

So they are typically okay with that.

I'd say the one exception is cesareans where they don't want to leave you open with an open wound or surgical site in the delivery room, in the OR, with just sitting there allowing for the cord to stop pulsating.

So that would be probably the only exception.

Yeah, absolutely.

I know I said cold.

A wet baby in there and getting all cold.

And then we're like, oh, but the baby's temperature is low, so we can't do skin to skin or whatever.

Oh gosh.

All right.

Well, you just said skin to skin.

We want to move on to that.

Let's hear a test about skin to skin.

Okay.

So what is it?

Why does it matter?

We did the episode last week about the, from the parent's perspective, what this Golden Hour is like.

But skin to skin is both protective for the birthing parent and the baby.

So we'll talk a little bit about both of those, even though part of that is parent.

So for the parent, skin to skin helps increase those oxytocin levels because it's that bonding love hormone with their baby.

And this maybe doesn't fit here, but I am going to say that ACOG does not recommend anymore putting hats on babies unless hypothermia is a major concern at the time.

Because if you are as the parent that just gave birth, you're not able to smell your baby's head when their head is covered.

And so that's part of the bonding process is smelling your baby's head.

And baby can still smell you, so their bonding is fine.

But the reason that we want mom to be getting that or the birthing parent to be getting that is because that helps their uterus contract back down and help stop bleeding.

So it's protective of the bleeding process.

And that is also why you continue to contract when you breastfeed throughout those first couple of weeks.

And that helps, again, your uterus contract back down, trying to get back to its pre-pregnancy size.

That oxytocin is what does that.

So the skin-to-skin is protective for mom, helps her uterus contract back down.

It's like little living ligatures in the uterus.

And then as far as for the baby, skin-to-skin with their parents, and this could be the other parent as well, or the partner doing skin-to-skin, if the birthing parent isn't in the situation to be able to do skin-to-skin, for example, in a cesarean or something like that.

If for some reason you're not able to do skin-to-skin in the moment, the other parent could.

What that does is it helps the baby regulate their body temperature, metabolic rate, hormone and enzyme levels, breathing rate, all of these things.

You have to think for nine months, this baby has never, or almost 10 months, this baby has never had to regulate any of those things on their own.

And so when they are skin-to-skin with their parent, that is helping their body regulate to their surroundings.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, there's so much that's going on.

They went from being inside you and being carried by you for nine months into this bright world that's just really crazy and really unfamiliar, and there's unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells.

And then so going skin-to-skin can just kind of help them regulate really to the world.

Yeah, I always tell parents, I want you to pretend like you were just in the movie theater at 12 o'clock p.m.

and you walk out, you were just in this dark, dark theater, and now you're out at the bright time of the day, and it's kind of blinding.

Well, yes, it's not that drastic when they're coming out, you know, the sun's not beaming down on them, but even with just natural light, you have to think it is still brighter than it was in the belly.

And the smells are really strong compared to only amniotic fluid that they've ever had.

And it's very cold.

They're going from 98.6 degrees in your body to like a 72, 74 degree room.

If we're talking cesarean, we're talking much colder than that.

And even though it's, you know, we think, oh, well, that's normal.

Well, they can't regulate their own body temperature for the first weeks of life.

So we, you know, being skin to skin with them, and that's why they say if baby has a fever, you need to put them skin to skin with you because that helps them regulate their body temperature.

Same with like aromatherapy.

I always turn off aromatherapy when it's time to push so that the baby is not smelling all of those things at birth because it's overwhelming to their system.

If you have an aunt that always wears heavy perfume and she's coming to visit, it's okay to mention, hey, would you please mind not, I love your perfume, but would you mind not wearing it?

I always say start washing your clothes and re-clear stuff a couple of months before the baby comes.

So you cycle through your clothes and don't have those super strong downy crystals or whatever on your clothing.

So all of these things are really important and skin-to-skin really helps the baby and the mom bond and it literally helps their internal systems work better.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot.

And a lot of it goes into breastfeeding as well.

Skin-to-skin is just absolutely crucial for successful breastfeeding.

Yeah, tell us about that.

So then after baby has gone skin-to-skin with mom, the next kind of logical step would be breastfeeding, would be initiating that first latch.

So part, there's a lot of different schools of thought on breastfeeding in the first days of a baby's life, first days and hours and moments.

For a while, it was kind of just like, let them go on mom and kind of figure it out.

And then it turned into like, oh my gosh, but we have to get baby latched and nursing really well within, as soon as humanly possible.

And so we were like doing all of these like boobs squishing exercises and like shoving babies onto the nipple and doing all these things.

And I think the evidence is now showing more of that kind of relaxed and natural approach is gonna be more beneficial for baby and mom.

So babies naturally after they are born, they have the, they're most alert.

They typically get like a two to three hour window after a baby is born where they're just really alert, really awake and their body and their systems are telling them that they need to find the nipple.

And so mom's nipple is going to smell like something that baby is familiar with.

Mom's nipples actually secrete this oil that draws baby to the nipple.

It smells like their amniotic fluid and babies will be naturally inclined to move towards that.

You may also see that during pregnancy, especially towards the end, your nipples are starting to darken.

This is to draw baby's attention to that area, kind of creating like a bullseye sort of thing for them to go to.

Some people might also notice-

And also the belly.

Is that what you're gonna say?

The belly, the linea negra is what they call it.

And that's dark, just like the nipples are.

Oh, look, I can find my little way up.

Yeah, there's a line that some people develop during pregnancy that literally just makes a little line for them.

So if we were to put baby skin to skin right on mom, and just let baby do whatever baby wants to do, babies are going to start moving their way, literally crawling their way up the belly with their little feet and their little hands kind of moving.

And they will find their way towards the-

Yeah, they will find their way towards the breast and the nipple, and they do a lot of kind of different movements.

They move their head back and forth kind of looking for it.

They kick their feet, which also serves as a kind of fundal massage, what helps that uterus to clamp down, like we talked about last week.

And they do this like head bobbing, and they look up at mom, and they look towards the breast, and they lick their hands, and they lick the breast and the nipple, and then finally they will latch themselves on to the nipple themselves and initiate breastfeeding.

And if we were to leave babies alone, this will typically happen in the first hour or two after their delivery.

So that is what a lot of people refer to as the breast crawl.

We kind of refer to it as just natural breastfeeding.

It's how nature intended it.

That's how babies will handle it if they're left to themselves.

So why does it matter if we let babies kind of do their thing and why is it important for babies to have the opportunity to do that?

So one is that after your baby is born and your placenta is delivered, the placenta delivering is going to send a huge rush of prolactin through your body.

You're gonna get that oxytocin, which is that contracting hormone, and you're gonna get prolactin, which is what's going to tell your body to start producing milk.

So if we can take advantage of those high prolactin and high oxytocin levels by allowing baby to latch on and nurse when they want to, then we can basically activate all of the milk receptors that are in your breasts to start creating more milk.

And that is what's going to tell your body that it's time to switch from that colostrum to the milk.

So allowing baby to latch on in that first hour or two after birth is going to be really important so that we can take advantage of those high hormone levels.

So babies who are born vaginally have about an hour or two that they're gonna be more awake and they're gonna be kind of ready to latch on.

One difference is babies that are born via C-section, we have a little bit less time to initiate that latch.

So in order to take advantage of the highest levels of prolactin and oxytocin, we want to try to initiate that first latch within the first hour after delivery rather than in the first two hours after delivery.

And that is going to allow for your body to take advantage of those hormones and for your milk to come in fully, basically.

Which is kind of a sick joke, right?

That you're still in the OR for basically an hour after a cesarean.

So getting that skin to skin and latching in that amount of time is really difficult.

And that's why having a doula there to help kind of facilitate all of that is really important.

So we need to do a whole episode on why you still want your doula in the OR if you need a cesarean.

But another thing to think about is if you are immediately sitting up after birth or blocked like from having a cesarean where you kind of are restricted on your movement, if you're sitting straight up, your baby is not gonna be able to crawl up.

Gravity is still there.

So we need to be lying down.

And that's part of the problem is a lot of times moms will kind of wanna move the bed up right away or the providers wanting to do something and then moving the bed up.

But really, if we just allow your baby to lie on your stomach slash chest, and I say that because it depends on how long the cord is at first, we're gonna see that baby be able to do that quote unquote army crawl.

And I'm just gonna plug here, Sam didn't even know I was gonna do this, but if you're listening to us, no matter where you are, we do have a class that Samantha has.

It's taught by an IBCLC and it's by your own pace and it is available from anywhere and you have a lifetime access to it.

It's fairly cheap.

So contact us if you decide you wanna take that because it's a natural breastfeeding course and makes it so all of this stuff just makes sense.

And just like hypnobirthing and stuff like that, it's about getting out of your own way.

We have to kind of undo some of the things that society has taught us is normal, which isn't.

So.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Breastfeeding is normal.

Breastfeeding is physiological, but it's not necessarily instinctual.

It's not something that you're just going to automatically know how to do when you have your baby.

And though your baby has these survival reflexes and is drawn to the nipple and is ready to do all of these things, your baby might also need a little bit of encouragement and help on how wide to open their mouth.

And we sometimes see with that breast crawl babies that are just like trying to go underneath the boob and they really want to hang out in the armpit.

Maybe that's just gravity, but sometimes they need a little bit of help.

And so having a class that you are taking in pregnancy that just kind of gives you that base of knowledge can be really, really helpful.

And if you were delivering in the hospital, you can look at the baby-friendly hospitals.

They're gonna have nurses and professionals there that are trained in breastfeeding, and they'll have lactation counselors or consultants that are able to come visit you postpartum to help with any sort of issues.

Our hospital is here in Austin.

All of our nurses are also trained in breastfeeding, and there are lactation counselors as well that are available.

And then if you're delivering at home, your midwives have a huge amount of training in breastfeeding too, or birth centers as well.

Midwives are gonna have all of that.

And then there are other professionals who can help you.

I always say, even if you don't think you're going to need any sort of lactation help, have the number of somebody that you can call just in case, because we just never know.

I'm going off on a little bit of a bunny trail here, but I think it's important to know these things ahead of time.

Yeah, I always say breastfeeding is natural and normal, and so is walking, and you have to learn to walk, and you have to learn to breastfeed.

And even if you did breastfeed with your first child, and it went fine, the second one is like the same dance with a different partner.

You have to learn how to dance with that partner.

So I also think it's really important to take those classes during pregnancy and not after, I mean, better late than never, but you're gonna have it all soak in a little bit more when you're pregnant and not also dealing with the hormones of just having had a baby and the lack of sleep.

And some of it is really important for those first moments.

So you're going to have already kind of missed the boat on some of these things to do if things haven't been done in the first couple of hours of life.

That's also why we don't want any procedures or medications or anything given to baby in those first couple of hours because we don't want to interrupt that mother and baby bond.

So anything else about breastfeeding before we go into those other procedures, Sam?

No, let's do it.

Let's get into it.

All right.

So the next part is about all of the medications they are going to offer in the first few hours of life to your baby or while they're in the hospital or if you're at home.

Some of them actually aren't offered at home.

So let's go over what those are.

There's three typically that people talk about.

There's vitamin K, which is not a vaccine.

It is actually a synthetic vitamin.

I'll go over that more in a little minute.

The hepatitis B shot, which is a vaccine.

And then urethra myosin, which is also known as the eye ointment that people have when your baby is born.

So, what are those three things?

Vitamin K, synthetic vitamin.

That is a shot.

You can also buy it in drops.

And I think you have to buy those from outside of the US.

And the hospital doesn't really count it.

So you have to just kind of like sign a release saying that you're not going to be giving your baby the shot.

And they don't really facilitate those drops.

You kind of have to pay attention on your own to that.

And those are oral drops.

And you have to make sure you're giving them at certain intervals in order for them to be effective.

So you'll have to kind of pay attention to the directions on those things.

This is because babies don't make a sufficient amount of vitamin K until day eight to be able to sufficiently clot their blood.

So if there's some sort of internal bleed or something going on that we don't know about, it's going to help protect that baby's body.

I always tell parents, and this is where it's kind of advice-ish, but here's my little disclaimer again, even though we had it at the beginning, this is not medical advice.

It's just what I would do.

I always say if you're considering not doing any sort of vitamin K, that's up to you.

I would reconsider and just reevaluate if you have a really super fast birth, because your baby can kind of hit the bumps and turns on the way down, or if there's any significant bruising or if you can see any bruising on your baby because that's again the idea there that there's potentially some sort of bleed going on inside.

So that is something that they offer at the hospital, vitamin K.

And then we have the hepatitis B shot, which is a vaccine.

So provider or pediatricians that do not accept patients that have a delayed vaccine schedule or are choosing not to vaccinate, they will say usually that your baby has to have the hepatitis B shot.

If they don't have it before their first visit with the pediatrician, they have to get it at that one in order to stay a patient.

So that's something that you need to ask your pediatrician about.

The hepatitis B shot can be given in the hospital.

It could also just be given at their first pediatrician appointment or whenever you choose to do it.

But the birth centers and home birth midwives tend to not carry this one.

I was told one time that it was because it tends to go bad quickly.

Not quickly, but people don't use it very much.

And then it goes bad.

And they're like, well, that was a waste of money.

So if you're going, some people have the school of thought of like, well, I'm not going to give them the hepatitis B shot because we don't have hepatitis B.

And the likelihood of them getting it is pretty low between now and when I go to their first pediatrician appointment.

So I'd just rather wait.

Other people have the school of thought, well, I'm going to do it anyway.

And if we're already giving a vitamin K shot, we may as well give them two shots.

It's no big deal.

So, you know, just one of one of your first parenting choices on what you want to do.

And then urethra myosin is eye ointment.

There is a big kind of again, two schools of thought here.

Sometimes people are feel like, well, why would I give eye ointment to my baby if they don't already have an infection or if we don't know if they have an infection because that's what this is for, is to it's like a prophylactic antibiotic that you're like gel kind of or a salve that they're putting in your baby's eyes.

And if you had gonorrhea or chlamydia, that would be two really big reasons to get this because that can cause blindness in your baby.

If there are other bacteria that can also cause an infection in the baby's eyes, we do sometimes have babies that their parents have no STDs or anything, but they still end up with a little bit of an eye infection.

And sometimes those parents decide if they didn't do erythromycin, they're like, well, we're going to use breast milk first to try to fix it.

Or we're fine with getting an antibiotic ointment from the doctor afterward or the pediatrician afterward.

Then I have other people who are like, I mean, I just don't want to have to deal with it.

I'd rather give them prophylactically so that we don't risk maybe in a week having an eye infection and having a newborn and having to travel to the doctor.

And so again, two schools of thought.

I do hear people say, but it's going to make the baby's eyes blurry.

And if that's the only reason, I'm like, their vision's already blurry.

Like they can see light and dark and that's about it.

But, you know, just some of those first three choices that you're going to make.

And then we're not going to go into circumcision here.

But if you are choosing circumcision for your child, the vitamin K shot is going to be something that that provider is going to require because they will not do a circumcision without.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think just talking about vitamin K for a second, the reason why they recommend vitamin K is because babies are not really getting vitamin K in pregnancy.

Their gut doesn't have a whole lot of bacteria, so they're not making enough vitamin K on their own to bring it up to the sufficient levels.

And vitamin K from the mom is not really very easily shared with the baby during pregnancy.

And so they're just naturally born deficient.

And then the reason that hospitals are doing shots of it versus like the oral side is because it's more easily able to be used by the baby's body because it's going into their blood versus going into their gut.

And again, if you're giving it to them orally, then that's going through the intestines.

The intestines don't really have the bacteria yet.

So not as much of it as being absorbed by the baby's body versus if you were using it in a shot.

So they do still get some when you do the oral and there's different protocols with it.

But if you are planning on a circumcision or if you did have a very physical labor and there's any sort of bruising on baby or they're worried about it in any way, then the shot would be indicated in those situations.

Yeah.

And again, that's why you have to give the oral multiple times and over a certain span of days because it's just not received by the body in the same way.

So what happens after all of that stuff?

After all of that stuff, so typically, you know, if we're going through the timeline of this Golden Hour here, baby gets their medicines, they get their shots, they do all those different things, and then they start doing their checks of the baby.

So they're going to measure a baby.

They're going to see how long they are, how big their head is, how much they weigh, which is always kind of an exciting moment for everybody of just seeing what did you grow?

What did you deliver?

What does baby weigh?

It can be pretty exciting sometimes.

And so they do all of these measurements and weighing of the baby.

And then they're also going to check some of their survival reflexes.

So babies are born with certain reflexes at birth, and they want to see what all of these reflexes and things are and make sure that everything is in working order on this brand new human.

So they have a stepping reflex when they're born.

This is also what they're doing when they're doing that breast crawl up your body.

They're doing that kind of stepping movement with their legs.

But if you were to take your newborn and place their feet on a flat surface, they're going to naturally try to step.

They're also going to have kind of like a startle reflex, where if you lower them quickly, their arms and their legs are going to go out like a little flying squirrel.

There's so many different reflexes that they're checking for, and then they want to check their hips.

They want to check their clavicle.

They want to make sure everything is looking good after delivery.

And midwives do this.

I actually don't know if they do this in the hospital.

Maybe you know.

But midwives, when they're doing all these checks, they're also looking at baby to see what gestational age the baby is.

And I don't know if I've ever noticed them doing that in the hospital.

I don't know if they do, and they just don't say anything or yeah, I don't know.

I guess it's all communicated a little bit more in and out of hospital birth setting.

Another thing you just said that made me think of something.

What was it?

Measurements, reflexes.

Oh, so they're also going to be checking your baby's heart rate and things like that.

They're going to be using the stethoscope.

They're going to be taking their temperature every once in a while to make sure that skin to skin with mom is working and that they need to add another blanket.

When I say working, I just mean that they're not being super exposed to cold and their body is working even harder to warm up.

I don't know if we talked about this in the Golden Hour parent episode, but they also are doing blood pressure monitoring and heart rate monitoring to mom after birth.

So the blood pressure readings happen frequently.

I know we talked about it with an epidural, but just in general, they should be doing that and checking heart rate.

For baby, they're going to do that as well.

Just remember that your baby is going to be mad that they're getting their temperature taken.

I actually had a dad, they were refusing all shots.

And when they took them over to go do like the measurement, the weighing and the length and that kind of thing, they took the baby's temperature under the arm and the dad thought that they were giving the baby a shot because the baby was so pissed.

And I was like, no, no, no, I swear.

And that's another reason you guys have a doula in the room, because somebody can be with mom, somebody can be with baby.

I was with baby and he stayed with mom.

That was how he chose to do it.

And so when I was over there watching, I was able to get, you know, he trusted me.

And not to say don't trust medical providers, but some people just don't already when they hire us.

And they find a lot of peace of mind to have us there letting them know, hey, I promise they weren't poking and prodding.

They were just taking a temperature.

And honestly, babies, the majority of the time gets so much more pissed off at that temperature thing, the temperature probe, than they do at the shot.

Like, baby will sleep through their little shots.

And the second you pull out the thermometer and put it under their arm, they are pissed off.

Yeah, I've seen babies get just be like totally fine with their heel being pricked for the little newborn test and then or the Billy Reuben check.

And then that you take their temperature and Lord, how do you watch out?

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

The normally the first temperature that they do over at the station is a rectal temperature.

And then after they have a good temperature with the rectal, they'll do it under the arm.

But I kind of feel like babies don't care as much about the rectal as they do about them.

Yes, I agree.

May seem more aggressive to you, but your baby probably likes it more or doesn't care as much.

Weird.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say the other thing they're watching out for is if they are peeing and pooping yet, they want to make sure that those systems are in working order.

So I think babies have, what's it, like 24 hours after delivery to have their first bowel movement.

And I don't remember how long it is after delivery for their first pee, but I think it's like six hours or something.

They've got a good amount of time.

A lot of babies are going to come out pooping all over you to start with, peeing all over the place.

The amount of wipes that I use, cleaning up a mom after her baby's little meconium booty is all over her is huge.

It's a large amount of wipes that go through so many pockets.

I think that people don't realize sometimes that what the, when the providers are getting excited about the baby peeing and pooping, they just think that it's them laughing at what's going on, but it's not.

It's that they're like, good, that works.

We can mark that off of our checklist.

Yeah, because you have 24 more hours.

After that first poop, they're like, you're good.

We don't have to worry about you as long as baby poops one time in the next day.

We're ready to rock and roll, which is just a big weight off of everybody's shoulders, I think.

Well, less thing to think about.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, I think that kind of covers it all.

All right.

Well, we'll see you next week.

We'll talk to you next week.

And I'm not going to tell you what next week is going to be about.

You're just going to have to tune in.

Yep.

Thanks, y'all.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

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