This is a difficult situation in my hospital, too. HCPs are coming from the perspective of understanding the important physical/psychological benefits of these first few hours, but many patients do not understand this. Especially in other cultures, which are more family-centered and less centered on the individual, the expectation is going to be that the family is present during birth or immediately after. Much of what they know about birth now comes from movies and TV which give a really unrealistic view of childbirth. What I have found works in these situations is patient education prenatally, or at the very least, the time of admission in L&D. The benefits of STS contact, bonding and breastfeeding for the first few hours needs to be explained to the parents prior to delivery. Once they understand the rational, they are much more likely to be on board with it. I think that if you don't educate parents about the benefits, and they have a certain
 expectation in mind of what is going to happen after birth, then we just state that "the rule" is no visitors, you are going to have patient complaints and unhappy patients. It's much better to get patient buy-in. If your patients aren't understanding why we are doing this and they aren't on board with it, they probably aren't going to do STS contact anyway. Just my two cents...

Tricia Shamblin, RN, IBCLC
Waukegan, IL

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