Newborn Skin-to-Skin Contact: Golden Hour, Dads & Long-Term Benefits - S1 E2

There’s a huge amount of pressure to get everything “right” from the moment your baby arrives, including “uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact during Golden Hour”. But is that really helpful? And is it worth continuing skin-to-skin in the weeks and months after birth?

In this episode of The Baby Fact Check, Greg Foot - new dad and creator & host of the popular BBC podcast Sliced Bread - is joined by trusted experts to fact check some of the most common pieces of social media parenting advice around newborn skin-to-skin contact:

• “You MUST do uninterrupted skin-to-skin for the first hour after birth.”
• “Skin-to-skin only counts if it’s with mum.”
• “Skin-to-skin is only beneficial for the time you do it.”

With help from Professor Topun Austin (Addenbrooke’s Hospital) and Professor Carolina de Weerth (Radboud University Medical Center), Greg explores why skin-to-skin contact can be so powerful, what the evidence says about the “Golden Hour”, and why parents can let go of the idea that everything has to happen perfectly to matter.

If you’ve seen a piece of parenting advice you’d like us to fact check, email us on [email protected]

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The Baby Fact Check is a Science Media Studio production.
Series Producer: Greg Foot
Content Producer: Graihagh Jackson
Video Producer: Adrienn Rusz
Audio Mix: Jonnie Howard
Recorded at: The Raspberry Pi Foundation, with help from Daria Hupov & Peter Simison
Special thanks: Teddy’s mummy, Katrin!