'I couldn't wait for "golden hour" with my newborn. But it was hours before I met him at all.'

The sheer volume of advice pressed upon expectant mothers is, frankly, overwhelming. Not only is the tidal wave of information near-impossible to process, it’s also highly contradictory. What one Instagram sleep consultant swears by is exactly what your best friend’s IBCLC told her not to do. 

But there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree on, and it’s dominating messaging from TikTok to midwives to group chats to hospitals: the hour of skin-to-skin contact after a baby is born – dubbed the “golden hour” –  is absolutely critical for mum and baby’s health, bonding and wellbeing, and they should spend it uninterrupted unless absolutely necessary.  

Experts go so far as to say that the golden hour improves breastfeeding success rates and is critical for mother and child bonding “even years down the road”. I have no reason to doubt the medical evidence, but even putting it aside, prioritising the “golden hour” just makes sense. What mother, having waiting months and months to meet her child, wants to be separated from them in those precious first moments?

Well, presumably, no mother. 

But some don’t get a choice.

Image: Supplied.

When my son was born eight weeks premature, I was in the lucky position of having some forewarning. I say “lucky”, like the days leading up to his birth weren’t some of the most frightening of my life, but I think having even a small bit of notice that my birth wouldn’t look the way I’d been anticipating helped me to process it later. 

It was made very clear to me that there would be no “golden hour” in our case, or even a golden minute. We knew my son would need immediate admission to the NICU. What we didn’t know was how much additional intervention he’d need, and in particular, whether he’d need to be ventilated.

During my c-section, everything felt surreal in the most literal way. It didn’t feel real that this was the birth I’d been thinking about since he was conceived, because it didn’t look anything like it. It didn’t feel real that my baby was ready to come into the world, because frankly, he wasn’t yet. Even as our incredible anaesthesiologist talked me through the procedure, checking to make sure I could see my baby as he was pulled from inside me (I couldn’t, actually, but at that point it didn’t seem particularly important), it didn’t feel real.

Watch: Questions about childbirth (answered by mums and non-mums). Post continues after video.

And it didn’t feel real an hour later, when I was delivered to my hospital room, back in one piece but without my baby. 

I remember thinking, as I lay in my hospital bed without my phone (having made the rookie mistake of handing it to my husband before I was wheeled into surgery, failing to realise it would travel in his pocket as he followed our son to the NICU), that this was my first hour as a mother, my son’s first hour in the world.

It was an hour unlike anything I’d expected: I was entirely alone, without even a way to contact the one person I knew would be with my son. 

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: it wasn’t a golden hour.

Image: Supplied.

But it wasn’t a completely dark hour either. Because while other mums might get to spend the first hour of their baby’s life loving them close-up, I got to spend the first hour of my baby’s life loving him from afar. And I was able to comfort myself with the knowledge that if being a parent means doing what’s best for your child, then my very first act as a mother – letting my son go – was a good one. 

When I read about the importance of the golden hour now, I worry that emphasising how critical it is can leave women who miss out feeling like they’ve failed. The fact is, if your baby isn’t delivered straight to your chest after they’re born, something – minor or major – has probably already gone wrong. To add the shame of missing critical bonding time and interrupting early chances at breastfeeding to what may already be a serious medical event doesn’t help anyone, least of all new mothers. 

It is, of course, important for mothers to be able to advocate for themselves during the birthing process. It’s powerful for them to be able to articulate what their best-case scenarios look like, including a desire to spend the golden hour with their baby. But it’s also important that they don’t feel like, in the absence of that best-case scenario, they’ve missed a critical building block in the foundation of their relationship with their baby. 

So I think, for those women, there’s value in reframing what we mean by “golden hour”. And in my head, it goes something like this: 

The golden hour is the very first hour you are a parent to the child you’ve just birthed. And your role, as a mother, is to spend that hour doing the best thing for that child.

Image: Supplied.

For the majority of uncomplicated births, that “best thing” might be uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact. 

But it also might be taking a very deep breath and waiting, patiently and quietly, while your baby receives life-saving medical attention. 

When I did finally get to meet my son, many hours later that day, he was placed on my chest. It still felt nothing like I’d expected. He was covered in cords, his breaths regulated by a CPAP machine. He was so small and fragile he seemed almost translucent. My major emotion wasn’t love or contentment. It was complete overwhelm. 

But the good news is, bonding with your baby doesn’t stop after their first hour, or first day. And so I went back to the NICU, and I held my son as much as they would let me, until one day we brought him home and I could hold him all the time. And I found that I could look back on the “golden hour” we missed and feel that it didn’t matter so much, after all. 

Because we may have missed our golden hour, but in the end, I got my golden boy. 

Feature Image: Supplied.