For a few years, hospital protocols have been changing to give the baby's first hour of life the value it deserves. It has been seen that the best thing for the newborn and the mother is to stay together from the beginning because it helps the baby maintain the temperature, makes him feel more secure and calm, facilitates the first take and, consequently, breastfeeding, and makes the mother fall in love even more with her baby.
The parents stay a little in the background, especially at the beginning, because who needs the baby most is his mother, who is the one who gestates and stops him; However, soon we will begin to spend moments with our baby and for those moments I can't think of a better advice than this: Dad, you take your baby skin by skin too whenever you can.
Hearing dad's heart, knowing us
One of the reasons for doing so is that he is also our son. And we are the father! And not only do we want to have a good relationship with them, but it is our obligation to try to have it: we will be father and son (or daughter) for the rest of life!
A good way to start is that, offering to know us through your senses: that our heart hears, that it smells us (better not to use cologne that masks our smell), that it hears us and that it feels us with its skin… the touch of its whole body on top of our chest.
Feeling his little body, falling in love with him
For us it is the same, it is to know our baby, not only with sight, not only in our arms, but to feel it in contact with us; notice his fragility, understand his dependence on us and think about how quiet he sleeps in our chest because trust our ability to make you feel safe, in our ability to take care of it.
Think that many parents do not feel anything too special to see their babies born ... in that we carry a huge disadvantage, because the majority of women are already fully involved knowing they are pregnant and they begin to feel the responsibility, the desire to meet their baby, the love and the magic of seeing and noticing that it grows inside. We, on the other hand, see all that in it, but we do not live it ... we do not gestate, we do not give birth and do not breastfeed. So really our first direct contact with our son is when he is born.
And many parents feel that it is the most important moment of their lives, they cry from emotion and commit to caring for the rest of their lives, but others do not feel it so strongly. Maybe it's lack of maturity, maybe it's not having done much to the idea or maybe it's something else. I must confess: I cannot say that the day my first child was born he heard heavenly music or saw a clearing in the clouds.
He was born by caesarean section and I met him separated from his mother, after a time when I knew nothing about her or him. I didn't see him being born and when they told me he was there, just under a lamp, in a parlor full of dirty carvings and blood, I had to believe that this was my baby because they told me, but not because I felt it was.
I picked it up, held it in my arms, welcomed the world and the family, and felt a bit absurd talking to a creature of minutes of life that was not going to respond.
I knew I was going to love him, I knew I was going to take care of him, I knew we were going to love each other a lot, but So I didn't feel that I was in a way in love with my baby. And yet, the first few days we shared many arms (she could barely move through the caesarean section), many moments together, and having him on top of me, asleep, relaxed, was a before and after.
That's why don't hesitate. When he's calm, he has eaten and has one of those moments when he doesn't need mom too much, take it. Take off your shirt, leave it in a diaper and put it in contact with you.
It is impossible not to love a "little thing" so fragile and so tiny that it lets itself be carried away to a peaceful sleep in your chest. Where you can smell her little head, kiss her and caress her little back, her little hands, her little legs and her feet ... Don't miss it, because when they grow up you can't do it anymore, and those moments do not return.
