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Original poster

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

251 replies

Silverlog · 15/03/2023 18:58

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.

OP posts:
Ostryga · 15/03/2023 22:17

I can’t remember a single thing from the ‘golden hour’. I have a picture of Dd on my chest and latching but I have zero recollection.

I remember her properly the first night she didn’t sleep a wink 😂 that stuck with me!

Dd is 6 now and we are close as anything. I promise you the golden hour means jack shit if you love your baby. It’s the months and years afterwards that count.

DumDeeDoh · 15/03/2023 22:18

I was in surgery after a 3rd degree tear after my first. She was given a bottle by my husband and I saw her hours later. She is now 20 and we have a great relationship ❤️. You will be made to feel shit many times as a mother from many different angles. It starts when you are pregnant and probably never ends! Dont feel bad about this. It wasnt a thing when i had my kids. Do your best, love your kids, you will make mistakes just learn from them (and missing golden hour is not a mistake!). You will be fine. Your baby is fine.

Colourfingers2 · 15/03/2023 22:27

When my ex had our last DC she had a C-Section and was drugged up to the eyeballs. I was given the first hold then they said we’ll clean him now and take him up to the ward in a cot. So I said “Not until he’s been on Zuzana” and I placed him him on her chest so she could feel him and touch him. There was no golden hour I just took matters into my own hands and the midwives smiled. Every hour with your child will be a golden hour. Don’t worry too much about it. Every child knows who their Mummy is. There’s not actually a golden hour so to speak. The priorities after birth are the health of baby and Mum. It’ll all be fine.

Interested in this thread?

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Antenatal & postnatal Families General health
ClaireStandishsLipstick · 15/03/2023 22:28

reddwarfgeek · 15/03/2023 22:07

Don't worry OP. It is not like that for the vast majority of people. I have never heard anyone talk about it before.
The lasting memory I have is the utter complete relief I was no longer pregnant and the amazing tea and toast mountain.
DD screamed for 5 hours as soon as she was born. I was very worried and thinking 'what the hell have I done'.

Best tea and toast I ever had.

madamovaries · 15/03/2023 22:32

How much can this matter, compared with all the thousands of hours that come afterwards?

Finally saw my medical notes this week after a long, horrific labour with my now-toddler son (the epidural fell out - although the notes said the epidural "snapped" and there was no anaesthetist available to put it back in for ages) and it said at the end "[My name] is exhausted". No shit.

I tried to get my husband to do skin on skin, figuring it didn't make much difference who it was, given that I just had nothing left at all - I was completely exhausted - and one of the midwives told me off!

We should all be kinder to ourselves about this stuff. Being a parent can be constantly feeling like you're failing but we forget maybe how much good parenting we're also doing.

JocelynBurnell · 15/03/2023 22:39

This has all the hallmarks of a Daily Fail story.

Heatherjayne1972 · 15/03/2023 22:42

Three kids in and I’ve never heard of a ‘golden hour’. Is it a thing?

my youngest two were c sections -as far as I recall baby came out, was checked and weighed wiped and wrapped in a towel then handed to me very briefly. Dad held baby while I was stitched up

they seem to have survived

Luckyluv · 15/03/2023 22:42

Pretty much all women who have a c section miss the golden hour - so that's 25% of the population.

It's all a load of bollocks OP. All this nonsense puts so much pressure on women.

You did the hardest thing any human can physically do. You built life, you carried life, and you delivered life.

Now you have to do the hardest thing mentally and emotionally - be a mother to a newborn.

Everything else is background noise. You don't need to carry the weight of this hippy dippy nonsense.

Flandango · 15/03/2023 22:43

Nimbostratus100 · 15/03/2023 19:05

WHo says the golden hour has to be at birth? The first time you were with it enough to hold and love your new baby was your golden hour

Too right. I just had a golden hour with my eldest. She is 20 and we sat and had a good chatter over dinner. One of many golden hours over the years

The first hour of her life was her being resuscitated and me being stitched up, whilst blood was mopped off the floor and ceiling. That was less than golden.

Melroses · 15/03/2023 22:45

It is something that came in during the 1970s. Usually you got to see the baby and to hold after they had cleaned and weighed it, and sometimes if you needed attention, you could end up back on the ward with the baby in the nursery and not have seen it. There would be no father around to hold it for you. The first they would see their baby was visiting time.
There were occasionally even women given the wrong baby later and never recognised it was the wrong baby, because they could not remember. Many babies were born at home which was very different.
Things changed and more babies were being born in hospital settings and the hospitals had to change too.

I remember visiting my local maternity unit for college in around 1980 and although it was considered a nice place to go it was still rather a conveyer belt system with dads tolerated. The babies were at the foot of the bed where the staff could see them but the mothers couldn't. I remember the Sister unwrapping a baby a few hours old so that we could see the umbilical cord and I was smiling awkwardly at the poor tired mum because it seemed so intrusive 😬

I am not sure it is necessary as all those mums managed, but it is nice to get the chance if you can and not to be denied it just because it doesn't suit the system.

It didn't work out for me but like others upthread, I got my time when they came out of hospital. I had twins in SCBU for over 2 weeks and just an hour or so alone with them on my bed made me so much happier.

adriftinadenofvipers · 15/03/2023 22:51

I keep reading this as 'golden shower'.... please make it stop!!🙄

Cailin66 · 15/03/2023 22:57

There is no such thing as a golden hour. Be happy for a healthy mom and baby. That’s worth more than gold.

peachgreen · 15/03/2023 23:08

I was too busy bleeding out, vomiting over my own face and having emergency surgery with a rapidly wearing off epidural to pay much attention to my baby to be honest.

JudgeJ · 15/03/2023 23:08

Cloudhoppingdancer · 15/03/2023 19:03

Of it makes you feel any better, I think the golden hour is a myth like the tooth fairy. One of mine spent her golden hour being resuscitated and I'm just glad it worked.

I do think that one of the worst things pregnant women can do is read, it gives rise to nonsense such as this, lots of women for all reasons don't have 'the golden hour'. Remember the people who feed this reading frnzy are only interested in making money and have to come up with new things to keep the income stream going.

Shodan · 15/03/2023 23:18

Don't worry about it OP.

I missed this so-called 'golden hour' too, what with selfishly being stitched up and going to take a shower to rid myself of blood, sweat and various other unpleasantnesses.

If my sums are correct, and calculating only until their 18th birthday, there are 157,679 hours to make up for it. I think the odds are in your favour.

Sparkleshine21 · 15/03/2023 23:21

Mine was so prem that I wasn’t allowed to hold her until four days after she was born. We are so unbelievably close and tactile now, we live in one another’s pockets pretty much and I always think that it’s because we were separated so much when she was born that we have been making up for it ever since!

Dyra · 15/03/2023 23:26

I didn't get the golden hour with either of mine.

My first was plopped onto my chest for a few minutes, but then I fell asleep. Didn't even notice baby taken off me.

My second was a C-section. For whatever reason, even though I was conscious and not shaking, I wasn't offered skin to skin. Maybe I didn't look capable of holding a baby, maybe they just wanted to get me out of there quickly to free up the theatre, maybe because it was 2am and they didn't think. Either way he was given straight to DH, and I didn't get to hold him until after the operation, and the golden hour, was over.

I think the idea of the golden hour is a "nice to have", but not necessary. The bond is forged with every minute you spend with your baby. Not just the first 60.

IneedanewTV · 15/03/2023 23:29

Mine was taken to special care where I eventually got to hold him by day 5. As usual golden hour is just another thing to beat mothers up with. Don’t they think that we already feel guilty.

Apollonia1 · 15/03/2023 23:33

I've never heard of the golden hour.
I had twins by c-section. They were both checked, wrapped in a blanket and put on my chest while I was stitched up.
Then one twin was whisked off to the HDU for the rest of the day.
I'd love to revisit those first moments again and get more photos for memories.

MrsComet · 15/03/2023 23:33

Finding this thread strangely uplifting

I too went straight to surgery after childbirth. They gave me an epidural and I was so exhausted that I fell asleep. Meanwhile DH was cradling DD in a room and having his first moments alone with her, which I think is kind of special.

DD's 7 now and there's been plenty of hours holding her, gazing at her, being with her. Nothing was lost during that first day. I carried her for nine months and then I laboured for days to bring her into the world and then I fell asleep. I think kt was well deserved

Blossomtoes · 15/03/2023 23:40

When my firstborn was three days old I picked him up and he nuzzled into the side of my neck. The wave of love was overwhelming. I wouldn’t swap that for any “golden hour”.

Calmdown14 · 15/03/2023 23:52

My golden hour (not in the right hour) was eating a whole large box of malteasers while my baby was in the plastic crib oblivious to the world.

The promised amazing toast took 3 hours to arrive and I was bloody starving.

For previous generations babies were taken away to give mothers peace and given bottles. And yet breast feeding rates were higher.... almost as if flinging babies onto exhausted, drugged and delirious women isn't always the best way to establish feeding (then waking them two hours later when they are finally getting some bloody rest)

FizzyFlamingo · 16/03/2023 01:37

@littlestrawberryhat you're welcome and you're right, if we worry it's because we care. That mum guilt definitely kicks in from the very start. I don't think I really bonded with DD until I'd recovered after about 2 weeks. I didn't feel any rush of love like I expected and then when it did kick in the guilt I felt that I hadn't felt this love instantly from the start was awful. I look back now and think why/how didn't I love the bones off her immediately, but I just didn't and I felt so overwhelmed that I just wanted to put her down and to not hold her. Now she's the best thing in the world - and we still contact nap at 20months 😄

mackthepony · 16/03/2023 01:47

Same with breastfeeding. Fed is best. How I beat myself up about It

Gem176 · 16/03/2023 01:53

Honestly, "golden hour"..... what a load of old bollocks.

We carry out babies every second of every minute of every hour from the moment they are conceived until they are born. Our babies know our smell, our voices, the rhythm of our heartbeat. They don't know they are separate beings from us for weeks after birth. Yet some "expert" wants us to believe that the hour immediately after birth is somehow more important than all that in the bonding experience? As I said, what a load of old bollocks. I love how everything is designed to make us second guess and judge ourselves.

You had a three day Labour and were being stitched back together then recuperating. Take no heed of anything that says you are somehow less because you didn't have skin to skin for that first hour. It matters not a jot.

Both my girls were c-sections and I was shaking like a leaf so they were handed straight to DP. He got that one initial hour, I've had hundreds of amazing one on one hours since. Skin on skin can be beneficial when done at any point in those first few weeks. I used to hop in the shower with my youngest when she was unsettled, the water and the skin on skin settled her. The result is we now have a toddler who will stand under the shower for hours if you let her 🙈

Some mums aren't even conscious during birth. Some babies are whisked away at birth and can't even be held for day and even weeks. None of that breaks the bond that is there from carrying your baby and being all they have known.