Birth Naked

by Heather DeWolf Bowser

08/08/2023

Do you know what is happening when you receive your baby skin to skin?⁣
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💫Your baby is searching for your smell, finding their way home. Did you know your nipples after birth carry the same smell as your baby’s amniotic fluid? They are primed to search for this smell on your naked skin - to find their way to milk eventually, but also to regulate their stress hormones after the birth process. While they may not *need* to nurse right away, they are primed to seek those smells, and show elevated stress responses when that is disrupted. They can’t find their way through a sports bra.⁣
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🔥Your body is literally changing temperature in response to your newborn’s skin. Bare skin against bare skin signals to your body whether your baby needs to be made warmer or cooler, and your breasts and belly respond accordingly. You are the optimal temperature regulator - far better than any blanket, or plastic warmer. You both need to be naked to do this vital work in the first moments after birth. It doesn’t work through a tank top or gown.⁣
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🌲The baby is working to colonize their new home (you) with the responsive, interrelational microbiome they will need to thrive. While we all know how important colostrum is in building baby’s gut and immune system, did you know that this skin to skin transmission is also an enormous part of those building blocks? Baby expects their first touch, first colonization to be your hands and skin. Not a piece of polyester or a strangers gloves.⁣
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🫧Your skin and senses are absorbing the hormonal signals from your baby that initiate the release of the placenta and regulate your bleeding. These vital signals are dangerously disrupted by blankets and hats.⁣
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Our bodies are so incredible! There are so many complex and interrelated functions happening at a primal, undisturbed birth that protect us and our newborns. For the first moments and days, and for a lifetime. ⁣
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And what a perfect filter through which to decide where, how, and with whom to give birth. If you aren’t able to be comfortably and freely naked, that is likely not a place where physiological, optimal birth is possible. ❤️

Work with me to make a plan for birth in YOUR power 🔥