Episode 12: What to do if you and baby are separated immediately after birth

Sometimes, birth doesn't go the way you expected. For reasons outside of our control, a birthing person might find themselves separated from their infant for a few hours or days after birth. I've been going on and on about the benefits of immediate skin-to-skin, but sometimes this isn't the reality. You can bond, nurture, and form a strong attachment with your newborn even if you've been separated. Here are some tips for how. 
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🌵 If possible, get the infant skin-to-skin with the other parent
🌵 Pump breastmilk every couple hours while you are separated to stimulate and maintain your milk supply.

🌵 If bottle feeding, do nurture feeds! Instead of propping up the bottle, hold the baby close during every bottle feeding, in nearly the same position they would be in when breastfeeding. Make eye contact, smooth their hair, nurture them and give them all the positive bonding, attentiveness, and attachment benefits of breastfeeding.
🌵 After you're reunited: skin-to-skin as much as possible. Just lay around skin-to-skin and nursing without a schedule or any expectations except to bond and re-connect.
🌵 Infant massage
🌵 Seek support. Find breastfeeding support groups, postpartum support groups, postpartum mental health counselors, peer groups, etc. Don't underestimate your need to seek support and address and validate difficult emotions after difficult birth and postpartum outcomes.
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🌵 Ever always: Do your research. Talk to your medical care provider. Make informed decisions.
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So much of birth is unpredictable. Learn as much as you can before your baby arrives.

Full transcript:

Hi, I'm Cara Lee, of Brave Journey. I'm a birth doula, childbirth educator, and mother of two. I'm also a prenatal yoga instructor and a nonprofit executive. And this is episode 12 of our weekly Brave Journey Birth Preparation videos. And today we're continuing to talk about those first couple of hours after birth.

And today I wanted to talk about what to do if you've been separated from your infant. Whether this was due to a medical emergency or for whatever reason, if you've been separated from your infant immediately after birth here are some tips for what to do, if that is your reality.

So, first I want to mention, if you want to get these videos straight into your inbox, you can go to bravejourney.com and give me your email address and you'll join my newsletter. And I only send, um, a weekly newsletter with the link to these videos.

So, like I said, what to do if you've been separated from your infant, sometimes for reasons out of our control immediately after birth, the infant and the birthing person are separated. If you've been separated for whatever reason, then all these videos I've been making, going on and on and on about the benefits of immediate skin to skin, that can be a little nerve wracking, and they may be complicated in the moment, if you find that you've been separated from your infant.

If a separation occurs or has occurred, there are things you can do to ensure that breastfeeding continues and to ensure that you and the infant find a very, very bonded experience as a parent and child. So first off, if you are separated from your infant and you are well enough, pumping to remove breast milk from the breast regularly can help establish your supply and help to ensure that you have adequate milk for your infant.

And if you have been separated from your infant, the medical care providers. Hopefully you're in a baby friendly facility and they should be coaching you through this.

If you are only separated for a little while, then get that baby skin to skin as soon as possible. So this is common with cesarean births , if it's not a family centered cesarean , the infant and the parent, the birthing parent are separated for about an hour after birth while the birthing parent recovers and the infant is in observation. And one thing you can do is see if your birth partner can get that baby skin to skin with them for the baby's benefit. Another thing you can do is as soon as you get to the room where you're your with your infant. Get that baby immediately skin to skin and just make up for lost time to spend as much time skin to skin as you possibly can.

This is even if it's a little while, if it's been a couple of days or weeks and you get home and you and your infant are working on re-establishing your bond with each other, you can spend just as much time as possible skin to skin. Skin to skin is magical for those first few weeks and months. So just get that baby on your skin, under your clothes and make sure that the two of you are spending a lot of time. A lot of time like that.

Another thing you can do is to spend a lot of time massaging your baby. So there's all sorts of really cute infant massage videos that you can find all over the internet.

Some baby and me, uh, yoga classes we'll offer a infant massage section. So you can learn if a massage there, you can just get a little bit of baby lotion and gently massage your baby. Just spend a lot of time. This is another version of skin to skin, right? It's the hands on the infant. And it can be very soothing for both the birthing parent and the infant, and very, very bonding. Another thing you can do is just. Just keep your infant close. So even if you're not skin to skin, even if you're not actively massaging them, just keep them with you as much as physically possible, especially if you're having trouble with your emotions catching up after whatever happened. That meant that the two of you were separated for a period of time, whether it's just a couple hours or was longer.

And there's something called nurturing feeding. So as a, as a parent who had to supplement, um, my own infants, I, it was, it was really important to me that when my infants were receiving bottles, that they received bottles in the same position they would be received breastmilk . So that means keeping instead of just like setting the infant in a chair and then propping the bottle up, you can hold the infant clothes as if the same position they're going to get all that warmth and contact and make eye contact as you give your infant the bottle. So then this is a way for it's a nurturing feeding.

It's almost the only thing that's different is what they're actually getting nutritionally, but all these other benefits of breastfeeding and chest feedingwhich is so much more than just the nutritional content of the breast milk, is happening. So you can absolutely do that. If for some reason you're not able to nurse because of the separation then bottle feeding is can absolutely be a wonderful, magical bonding experience. So every feeding that kind of closeness and connected this and physicality and eye contact and the infant will get all sorts of positive benefits from that.

Um, and a side note there's all this Really positive data on breastfeeding and breast milk, which is true. Um, but it's really hard to separate out what is the nutritional content of the breast milk and what is actually the physicality of nursing, the holding close, the eye contact, the, the snuggling and the, and the closeness and the attentiveness that comes from that kind of a relationship.

So if you are bottle feeding your infant, you can absolutely create everything. You can also look into donor milk, but that's, um, another concept.

So amongst all of this, don't be afraid to reach out for help. If, if you are, if you are separated from your infant and if there are things that happened outside of your control within the context of the birth of this infant, please don't underestimate the challenge you maybe feeling, especially even just feelings of disappointment for what you expected and what you know is the norm versus what was your experience.

Um, you can reach out. There are often support groups in many communities for families that are grappling with, um, different kinds of outcomes and, and, and just generally postpartum support groups can be an opportunity to find folks to support you through this process. But really go find a postpartum support group, a postpartum counselor, mental health support in your area.

I really encourage it. Don't be afraid to reach out and talk to folks.

Okay, thank you very much. This is that's all I wanted to talk about for today. Uh, once again, I'm Cara Lee, I'm a birth doula, childbirth educator, and a mother of two. And this is episode 12 of our weekly Brave Journey Birth Preparation videos.

If you want to look at all the other videos I've made so far, you can go to bravejourney.com and you'll find them all there. Thank you very much. I appreciate you.