Bathing of the newborn is an important part of routine care in hospital nurseries. It helps to remove undesired fluids like blood and meconium from the newborn’s body and aids in rendering hydration to the stratum corneum of the newborn’s skin, thus maintaining skin integrity, barrier function property and body temperature. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests the first bath of the newborns after 24 h of delivery till their vital signs become stable. This will further help to keep residual vernix caseosa intact and to shed with normal care and handling. However, the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) recommends giving the first bath after achieving cardio-respiratory stability i.e. up to 2 h after delivery; whereas the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends bathing no sooner than 1 h after birth, to uninterrupt maternal-infant contact.

A group of researchers investigated to find the most appropriate time for the newborn’s first bath. It was a prospective randomized study that was conducted in one hospital in July–September 2017.

The observations of the study were as follows-

• More newborns receiving a skin-to-skin contact with their mothers gained bath at 24 h vs 2 h after birth (65.2% vs 33.3%).
• More mothers helped in their baby’s bath at 24 h vs 2 h and vs 6 h(65.2% vs 5.9% vs 15.7%) respectively.
• Mean incubation time was higher among newborns who had their bath at 2 h and 6 h (2.10 vs 2.18 vs 1.78) than those who had their bath at 24 h respectively.
• Babies with the first bath 24 h after birth were found to be calm compared to crying vigorously (38.6% vs 9.1%).

Thus obvious Benefits were observed in Delaying newborn first bath until 24 h of life, which included reducing hypothermia and vigorous crying, benefit from the vernix caseosa on the skin, receiving adequate time of skin-to-skin contact and mother′s participation in her child’s bathing.

Source: BMC Res Notes. 2020;13(1):430. Published 2020 Sep 14. doi:10.1186/s13104-020-05282-0