Skin to Skin

Skin-to-skin, also called “kangaroo care” is when mom or other support person provides contact and comfort for an infant.  Neither is wearing clothes or blankets covering their skin surface at the site of contact, and can be useful for multiple different reasons in the postpartum period.  The one caution is that moms with very low milk production will be instructed that if they “just do more skin-to-skin” they will increase their milk production.  This is a recommendation based in fact (having moms and babies do skin-to-skin after birth is much better for milk production than immediately separating them), but it isn’t applicable in many circumstances to which it is applied.  It’s never wrong to cuddle a baby skin-to-skin, but moms (and partners and other support) can become exhausted trying to adhere to this constantly to “increase milk production.”  I always discuss do what is reasonable and possible, and “not enough skin-to-skin as infancy progresses” is not the reason moms with very low production do not produce enough milk