Informed Birth Choices

Pop quiz: What is the fastest way to warm a new born baby?

a) Place it under a $5,000 infant warming system
b) Swaddle it tightly in multiple blankets
c) Place is directly onto it's mother's chest

If you answered a) guess again.  I recently worked on an "evidence based project" with a team of RNs from a Baltimore hospital. Evidence based practice is finding a renewed following in hospitals.  What!?  Don't we use scientific evidence in medical practice already?  Only a fraction of medical practices are based on evidence.  In recent decades babies were immediately taken to a warming tray, briskly cleaned and swaddled tightly in blankets.  In the case of this project we were researching the best way to regulate the newborns temperature.  Not surprisingly the answer was for the mother to hold the newborn skin-to-skin (STS).  STS, when implemented properly, had the added benefits of improved outcomes for the newborn, increasing moms' level of satisfaction, and promoting the establishment of breastfeeding.  Yet out of 14 surveyed area hospitals only 2 reported STS is routine.  Clearly we are doing our newborns a disservice.