I feel a bit shit about giving birth now - I missed the 'golden hour'

[Silverlog]

I've just been reading in the news about how important the golden hour is for your newborn. To have it laid on your chest skin-to-skin for the first hour. I was absolutely pie-faced on drugs giving birth and I was hallucinating too. It took me 3 days to come down to earth again afterwards, I was zombied-out. I'm actually really unhappy about the amount of drugs I was given. (The reason was that nothing gave pain-relief, all 8 epidurals were like water, no effect). I was given a lot of different stuff.

Having given birth, baby was wrapped up, shown to me & handed to dad, where she stayed whilst I was stitched. Very soon I was fast asleep after a 3 day labour.

I know it doesn't matter now as she's grown, but how I wish it'd been different.

One of my children was handed to their daddy after birth while I got stitched up from an episiotomy and forceps delivery.

My second did skin to skin immediately with me so I guess we did the "golden hour".

Both children had straightforward breastfeeding journeys and I was closely bonded to both...

I wanted to post NOT to be smug... But to give a real life example of why I think the whole golden hour thing is absolute rubbish. Something else made to make mothers feel guilty when it's totally unnecessary.

You don't love your child any less because you didn't hold them immediately! In fact you love them MORE as you went through that pain for them... Please don't beat yourself up over something you can't change and can't control! You're doing just fine!