Vernix-bath-baby
It’s becoming more common to postpone the first baby bath of 2 or 3 days after birth. But some moms still care about grooming their baby right after birth, either because they find it dirty or because they want it to be beautiful.
Here are 5 reasons to postpone the birth bath for a few days:
Regulating baby temperature
At birth babies struggle to regulate their temperatures. At birth, a naked baby exposed to an ambient temperature of 23°C suffers the same thermal losses as a naked adult at 0°C knowing it will take the baby more than an hour to recover his starting temperature.
There is really no emergency to give this first bath and WHO recommends postponing it until the days after childbirth.
Moisturizing power and varnix protector
At birth the majority of babies are covered with a little blood, mom’s, and vernix, a fat white substance whose texture resembles thick cream or butter. The vernix has real moisturizing power, it is absorbed by baby’s skin and protects it. In theory, futures babies almost don’t have any anymore but they don’t always do.
Delaying the baby bath for a few days will allow the vernix to penetrate baby’s skin well.
A little gooey but appetizing
Some moms want to bath their baby right after birth because they find him dirty and gooey, because they want him clean to wear his cute birth outfit. But to see, there’s nothing dirty. Blood is mom’s, then there’s the vernix. And most of the time babies are wiped after birth, there’s really no blood anymore, just a layer of vernix. Yes hair can have that ′′ wet effect ′′ appearance, but does it really matter?
And besides he smells good
The smell of babies at birth is simply delicious. What if the babies were really dirty and needed a bath so much they wouldn’t smell so good.
Prefer skin to skin
Instead of focusing on your baby’s toilet, instead take advantage of it to do a long skin-to-skin session, flesh-to-flesh.
Finally, know that this bath question was asked on our questions section: should you wash your baby directly after birth. Feel free to come share your experience!