Relationship between skin-to-skin contact during the first hour of life and duration of exclusive breastfeeding.

Background: Exclusive breastfeeding (BF) has the greatest potential impact on child mortality of any preventive intervention. Skin-to-skin contact (SSC) during the first hour of life is beneficial for initiating BF; however, routine separation of mother and infant is still common. This work aimed to demonstrate that SSC during the first hour of life is associated with a greater frequency and duration of exclusive BF.

Percentage of birth weight loss as a reference for the well-being of the exclusively breastfed newborn.

As health professionals, we have memorized that "newborns can lose up to 10% of their birth weight during the first week of life and should regain it by two weeks of age". However, this statement, which appears so accurate, comes from studies conducted in the 1960s, when medical knowledge and how newborns were fed were utterly different from what it is today. Currently, multiple factors contribute to the percentage of weight loss at birth and the rate at which this weight is regained.