I was no mail for 5 days and have obviously missed something.
Where I work, we wash blood and gunk off newborns in plain water about two hours after birth if they have normal body temperature.  The bathtub is a large sink which is part of the same countertop where babies are clothed, under a warming lamp, before being transferred to postnatal ward.  If they are a bit lower in temperature we just wipe blood off them with a warm washcloth.  We use oil in the water if the baby is post dates and peeling.  There is never any scrubbing but babies with lots of hair, which acts as a gunk collector, may have their hair combed with a de-lousing comb under running, comfortably warm, water.  Most Norwegians don't find blood stains on clothes, or globs of bloody mucus on the baby's head to be esthetically acceptable, it's just one of our cultural peculiarities, I guess, and one which immigrant groups seem to recognize as well.
On the ward, mothers and fathers bathe their own babies for all their enjoyment, but not more than once a day!  They usually appreciate having staff present for the first bath to help if need be, and after that they do it themselves.  This is often a photo/video opportunity and siblings may participate.  It happens in our nursery, which is used only for changing and bathing babies and is the domain of parents, babies and staff.  Again, we use water with or without oil, no disinfectants and no special agents on the cord.  We do wipe carefully around the cord to remove, well, gunk.  We have a word as technical as toe-jam for it, and treat it about as technically too.  Mothers are very often squeamish about this and love it if we offer to do it.  They seem to be worried that the baby is like a balloon and the cord stump is where it is tied to keep the air in.
Mothers sometimes shower while father bathes baby in the birth room.  This is at the end of the two hours they spend just getting to know each other.  I feel we have many other routines which are more detrimental to BF than our bathing practices, and even so, you know what our stats are like!
just my 0.25 worth
Rachel Myr
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Kristiansand, Norway where our system looks SUPER high tech after my visit to Amsterdam last week.  Our BF stats are still miles better than theirs-- more and longer.

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