[Experiencing skin to skin contact with the baby during the postpartum period as a mechanical act].

The objective was to understand the puerpera's experience during the first skin to skin contact with the newborn in the immediate postpartum period, the obstetric ward of a public hospital in a city in Bahia. Exploratory, descriptive and qualitative study, approved by the Ethics Committee and conducted with fourteen postpartum women, through semi-structured interviews in the period July-August 2011. The data were analyzed using Grounded Theory, identifying the phenomenon "Experiencing skin to skin contact as a mechanical act" and its three subcategories: "Encouraging the only contact", "Contact as a mechanical act" and "Being forced to initiate breastfeeding.