1. Introduction
One of the most important needs of infants at birth is the maintenance of temperature because an infant is not able to generate heat due to lack of shivering mechanism, and this leads to a rapid decline in its temperature [1]. Currently, the routine care to prevent hypothermia is to put the infant under a warmer, causing the separation of the mother and newborn. One of the most important roles of a nurse is to facilitate a close bonding relationship between the mother and infant. To fulfill this role and to treat hypothermia, nurses apply an efficient, accessible, and applicable method called mother and newborn skin-to-skin contact [2]. The movement of the infant’s hands over the mother breasts in kangaroo care leads to increased secretion of oxytocin, which results in increased secretion of breast milk and breast heat. The heat is transferred from the mother to the baby because the mother’s body temperature activates the baby’s sensory nerves, and it results in the baby’s relaxation, reduction in the tone of the sympathetic nerves, dilation of the skin vessels, and increase in the baby’s body temperature [3].
Mother and infant skin-to-skin contact is well-known in full-term infants with natural deliveries [4]. However, it is believed that infants delivered via cesarean section are predisposed to hypothermia due to low temperature in the operation room, mother’s unconsciousness, spread of mother’s heat from the center to the environment, and reduction in mother’s central temperature. Therefore, mother and infant skin-to-skin contact is potentially limited in infants after born via cesarean deliveries [5]. However, cesarean section surgery has increased dramatically, so that it has increased four times over the last 30 years [6]. The statistics by the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education in 2004 obtained from different areas in Iran reported an estimation of 40 to 60% of caesarean sections in the country. Numerous studies have been conducted on the physiological effects of mother’s skin-to-skin contact with preterm and full-term infants after natural deliveries, but few studies have been done on full-term newborns after being delivered via cesarean section [7].
Although mother and infant skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth and the start of breastfeeding during the first hour of birth are considered the top fourth measures to obtain baby friendly status within hospitals, these measures are still not done effectively in Iran and there has been no endeavor to initiate SSC in the country so that the mean of breastfeeding starting is 3.5 hours in natural deliveries and 6.9 hours in delivering via cesarean section, and only 1.5% of infants are breastfed during the first hour of birth [8]. According to the Center for Disease Prevention, only 32 percent of American’s hospitals were doing skin-to-skin contact of mother and newborn for two hours after birth and the usual method is to take the baby under a radiant heating in the operating room and nursery word while the World Health Organization recommends that skin-to-skin contact for mothers and newborn should be done regardless of age, birth weight, and the clinical status [9]. The results of a study by Huang et al. (2006) showed that cesarean infants in skin-to-skin contact group had higher mean temperatures compared to the controls who received the routine care under the warmer [10]. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the effect of skin-to-skin contact on infants’ temperatures and breastfeeding successfulness in full-term infants after delivering via cesarean section.