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.

Well if it makes you feel better I knew about the Golden hour but mine wouldn't latch for anything. She just stared at my nipple with this look on her face like "What do you expect me to do with this?" I even managed to shove it in her mouth at one point but she didn't understand she was supposed to suckle. Totally uninterested. Eventually managed to get her to eat but it was in a bottle. Total and utter defeat. No pun intended! She later took to the breast but that was a month later.

I had a GA so was literally asleep when my son was born and for some hours later. I felt real guilt about it after and to be honest a bit of a disconnect from him due to how things had happened. He's a strapping 6 year old now and we adore each other. Honestly please please don't worry xxx

'The golden hour' sounds like something a hypno-birthing Instagram 'influencer' would talk about every 3 posts when they've run out of content.

I spent my golden hour being crashed and resuscitated- it’s a myth.

your baby had hours with her mother skin to skin and bonding and a mother that loves her so much to beat herself up about this. Do you remember your golden hour? Nope neither do I. My daughter was held by a nurse - whilst they restarted my heart.

we are very very close.

please forgive and let go xx

Yes, I just saw that in the Mail Online. It's all too easy to take this sort of click-baity headline personally. Literally millions of mothers, like you and me, did not get this "golden hour" for one reason or another. Just forget about it!

Remember the Mail exists to make people, especially women, feel they are doing it WRONG all the time.

Didn’t have the golden hour with either of mine, was off my head with dd1 (with the pain, didn’t have meds) had issues delivering placenta and needed lots of stitches so baby was handed to dh and my mum whilst I was sorted out. Dd2 was similar, needed stitches so dh held her, then had a shower whilst my dad held her. Both are now teens, I have no guilt.

You might have ‘missed’ the instagram moment, but you are there for what’s important. The nights spent caring for her when she is ill, the calming chats about friendship problems, the advice over what exam ir university choices to make, the correcting her when she goes wrong and praise when she does well, the cheering when she wins a race at sports day or scores a goal at netball, the pride when she says her line in the nativity play. Do I need to continue? You have ‘missed’ something minor in the whole parenting adventure…

Golden hour? 😆 🤣 😂 Hilarious, who makes up this shit? Never have I felt less golden than directly after giving birth, the babies were quite grumpy and out of sorts too.

Never heard of the 'golden hour'.

You were in labour for three days. You must have been beyond exhausted. You have the rest of your life to hug your beautiful baby - in the grand scheme of things the 'golden hour' is nothing.

Golden hour #1 - fully dressed baby plonked on me post section with her foot in the as yet uncleaned areas so her pure white babygro was covered in blood, lots of clattering around and wheeling me up to the chaos of an overpopulated and understaffed ward. More of a Somewhat Red fifteen minutes, followed by three hours of waiting for some pain relief as the epidural wore off.

Golden hour #2 - a very cross baby heaved out with the use of forceps and dropped on my belly with a thud, out of reach, left there whilst they got on with the embroidery, picked up for her father to hold/so she could shout at somebody else for dragging out of her very comfortable home, I promptly fell asleep/passed out from a combination of no sleep for two days and nights and blood loss, waking only when a midwife came into the ward with a cup of tea and then going straight back to sleep/passing out again.

Best times for both were when everybody and their dog had been fucked off home (I would have lost the plot had the ex and everybody else's DPs/DHs been allowed to stay all night) and I could actually be with them uninterrupted.

Nowhere near as traumatic as some of these stories, but my first was born by emergency C-section and I didn't get to hold him or even really see him until about an hour after he was born. I saw him for about a minute and then they whisked him off to be cleaned up and weighed and he wasn't brought back to me until I was in recovery.

Like you, I felt robbed. It didn't even occur to me until a couple of weeks later that I could still do skin to skin, that it wasn't too late.

Your feelings are totally valid and understandable, but I think too much is made of the golden hour. I had a great birth with my second baby, but I haven't bonded with her more than I did with her brother.

The surgeon for my C Section asked that my baby was lain down on his own for the first hour in order to help clear his chest, (common in a planned c section that the baby has not ‘prepared’ for the birth so needs time to breath well).

Hospital midwife ignored this, placed it on me skin to skin, and I was too out of it to protest. My baby ended up in SCBU because of breathing problems because of this for 4 days. Thankfully all OK in the end but I was so angry with the midwife for thinking ‘golden hour’ trumped everything, it certainly doesn’t.

I just spent an hour afterwards crying because I was hormonal, overwhelmed, drugged and relieved but also scared because I didn't want the woman to stitch me up because I could feel everything. Horrendous. This was 7 months ago.

In the hour after my second birth I was disoriented and relieved. I remember being stitched up by a male doctor who had lamps on his glasses, he looked like he was in his shed making a boat in a glass bottle ornament. Meanwhile the midwife said to me "oh my gosh she's so big, can I take her to show my colleagues?!" So with my permission she took her down the corridor to the midwife station where she and her colleagues cooed after my 11lb chunk. Surreal.

The birth experience doesn't define you as a mother and now having had three birth experiences myself I can say that it's a rare, lucky woman who gets her peaceful, serene birth/after birth experience. We try but many of us don't have that experience and that's ok, with time you can make peace with it.

I don't know who sets these motherhood standards but they are a load of shit. All you can do is your best.

The ‘golden hour’ is ludicrous.

I had two text book births in that there were no drugs, delivered in water.

For the first I was in a by then very grim pool I couldn’t sit in and hold him without near drowning and severe discomfort. I then had to clambour out and lie on a weird sofa bed thing where I spent an hour trying to deliver the placenta. Even without drugs it was a total blur and I barely remember holding him. In fact I think he was taken off to get weighed and a jab.

for the second I actually joked about the golden hour not being very golden as my husband held her and I had my legs in stirrups being sewn up with a failed anaesthetic cream that made me near hit the ceiling.

Honestly your bond is not formed in this hour. Most women feel like they’ve been run over and are not comfortably snuggled up looking serene. Your bond is made as you sooth them, tuck them up, comfort them when they cut their knees.

You’ve not failed, you’ve been sold a lie

I didn't get this with either of mine.

Baby number 1 my blood pressure dropped so low I couldn't even open my eyes or lift my head, thought I was going to die.

Baby number 2 was born 3 months early and was intubated immediately. Didn't get to hold him until he was 3 weeks old.

Both of them are thriving - load of bollocks if you ask me.

I had it with DD1 - hot sweaty and had this dirty baby plonked on me and we were just left for well over hour before they decided to wash DD1 and then much later allowed me a bath. It was hottest day of the year I'd have prefer to get clean and comfortable - which sounds ungrateful but I was really sweaty hungry and thirsty and she was covered in poo none of which got addressed till much later.

With HB they handed them off to DH and faffed sewing me up and doing stuff letting me feed and hold seemed far down MW list - so can't have been that vital.

I have a memory of just wanted DP to have DC1 as I was in such a state. Yes they did get skin to skin but it wasn’t some magical thing. We are incredibly bonded ten years on.

DC2 had the perfect birth. Hours of skin on skin, didn’t get lifted off me for something like 3 hours and yet he’s ambivalent towards me 🤣

Don’t give it another thought. You are enough.

Mine had heart problems, I saw her for 10 seconds after birth and then 3 hours later. She's fine now. I planned a different start for her but in the end her health was more important. She spent a week in NICU and sometimes I wasn't even allowed to hold her (like the whole day). She's very bonded to me so I guess it's a bit overrated how important it is.

I can’t face it straight after. Literally wrote in the birth plan for DC3 that I could hold him til cord stopped pulsing and then he’d do skin-to-skin with DH, and please don’t try to convince me otherwise.

I had the golden hour, but I didn’t know it was called that. With DC 4, it was anything but golden. I was left on a bed in ICU about 4.5-5 foot high so I couldn’t get down, too far from the call bell to reach, laid flat with DC on my chest, him naked, me in pj top for an hour while they “looked to see where the doctor was”. DC slowly became colder and colder so needed an incubator to get his temperature back up for 36 hours and I was slowly haemorrhaging. Not the ideal experience.

The golden hour is the first time you hold your baby, it doesn't matter whether that's straight after birth or (like me) a week later in NICU. The first time you look into eachother's faces and feel this tiny little body that you've grown inside of you for months, THAT's when the magic happens.

The golden hour isn’t a lie/insta moment as other posters have commented. It’s great for bonding and regulating babies temperature and breathing/heart rate and hormones after birth.

BUT it will be fine, you did absolutely bloody marvellous getting them here.
When I didn’t quite get to full golden hour with first baby because of an overzealous homebirth MW obsessing over me having a wee 🤣 my husband did baby skin to skin on his chest. Lots of dads/other relatives do this.

Its a shame hospitals don’t suggest this more because it’s quite a big thing at home births.

Its strange how the guidelines change between the two too - like at homebirths you’re told “absolutely no hats on baby indoors” but in hospital where it’s about 40 degrees and sweltering they pop a hat in baby as standard. Lol. Makes no sense to me.

anyway I digress, it’s ok to feel a bit sad about it but honestly they’ll be ok - you’re doing great!

@Youthinkyoureuniqueyourejustastatistic she's said her daughters grown now.

Same. I was really looking forward to it, but she was taken to the NICU and I didn’t meet her for nine hours after her birth. We have a very strong bond now but the headline today still made me feel a bit shit.

As others have said, there’s a lot of this in motherhood: not giving birth vaginally (microbiomes), having a shit time breastfeeding (but the health benefits!) and now the golden hour (essential to bond!). All we can hope to do is our best and muddle through with the deal we are dealt.

Its a shame hospitals don’t suggest this more because it’s quite a big thing at home births.

It really wasn't with my HBs - in fact MW led hospital unit did it but not HB.