Helping Families Bond

Family Bonding From the Start

Quick Links: 
Breastfeeding | Rooming-In | Couplet Care | Bonding When There are Complications 

Family bonding is essential to the long-term health and well-being of parents and babies. Bonding should start immediately after birth and continue throughout your stay in the hospital.

How Does St. Peter’s Health Partners Encourage Bonding?

Because our staff understands the importance of family bonding, we make every effort to keep you, your partner and your baby close to each other. For example, we:

• Place your newborn on your chest for skin-to-skin contact, also known as “kangaroo care,” immediately after delivery
• Strongly encourage breastfeeding, but support your choice of either feeding method
• Keep you and your infant together until discharge
• Encourage your partner to stay overnight by providing a sleeping area, offering meals and paying for parking
• Host many classes on parenting, breastfeeding and other skills that promote family bonding

Our patients consistently rate us very highly for our efforts to encourage bonding after birth.

Breastfeeding

Lactation and breastfeeding are important to the physical and emotional health of you and your baby. Breastfeeding:

• Protects your baby from several diseases and conditions
• Reduces your risk of cancer
• Helps your body return more quickly to pre-pregnancy condition
• Provides crucial skin-to-skin bonding time

We encourage lactation and breastfeeding by educating mothers during pregnancy, after delivery and throughout postpartum care. We offer in-person and online classes on lactation and breastfeeding for expectant mothers. In the hospital, we coach mothers at the bedside. And we have established excellent partnerships throughout the region to stay engaged with mothers who choose to breastfeed after they go home.

Because of our efforts to encourage breastfeeding, we have earned UNICEF’s baby-friendly designation.

Rooming-in

Parents generally don’t want to be separated from their babies. Rather than sending your newborn to the nursery, we encourage families to “room in.” When babies room in:

• Parents and babies get to know each other better. For example, you can learn when your baby wants to eat or be changed.
• Babies often cry less.
• Parents can participate in baby’s care right at the bedside.

Our staff makes extra effort to help families room in. With most families, all postnatal services can be provided right in your room, including tests and checkups. If you need to rest, our staff can even sit in the room and rock your baby while you sleep.

Couplet care

Couplet care, also known as parent-baby nursing, helps the family adjust to their role as primary caregivers for their newborn. In couplet care, one nurse is assigned to the parent-baby pair on the maternity ward. This is different from some models that may assign one nurse to a new mom and a different nurse to her baby.

A couplet nurse:

• Teaches you how to care for your baby at the bedside throughout your stay
• Helps you identify ways to bond
• Minimizes interruptions in your room by checking on both you and your baby at the same time

Bonding When There are Complications

Bonding can be more difficult when a baby is in the NICU. Ours is designed to welcome families and encourage bonding:

• Recliners and comfortable settings encourage parents to sit with their baby for hours.
• We encourage breastfeeding in the NICU and offer all of the equipment you might need to pump breast milk.
• We offer parents a courtesy stay on the maternity ward so you can be nearby.

We also take steps to ensure that mothers who are experiencing substance or alcohol use disorder can bond with their babies. We don’t move every baby who is in withdrawal to the NICU to receive narcotics.

Instead, we use the eat-sleep-console (ESC) approach. If a newborn can eat normally, sleep and be consoled, then the baby can withdraw while being held by its mother. This approach boosts bonding and empowers recovering mothers to continue caring for their newborns.