The 3 Golden Hours | The 3 Most Important Hours for a Mother and her Baby
As an experienced nipple trauma expert with over 45 years of experience as a midwife, I’ve witnessed the extreme stress mothers can go through when they experience common breastfeeding complications.
Painful nipple damage, mastitis and low milk volume may be associated with a lack of breastfeeding knowledge, the rapid processing of women and babies and the use of commonly taught and forceful techniques in the hospital system.
The truth is, the hospital system isn’t designed to be in your best interest. It’s designed for time efficiency. This push for time efficiency means your 3 Golden Hours are likely to be interrupted by routine hospital procedures that can and should wait.
What are the “3 Golden Hours”?
The 3 Golden Hours refer to the immediate hours after a mother gives birth. It’s so important that mothers are given the opportunity to be skin to skin with their babies during these 3 hours to breastfeed their baby and form that immediate bond.
So why does the hospital system often interrupt a mother and those 3 important hours with her newborn?
At the end of the day, hospitals are businesses, they want you in and out as quickly as possible.
That means routine hospital procedures like weighing, bathing and injections, which don’t need to be done immediately after birth, unnecessarily disrupt these 3 precious hours.
The big issue with this is that it delays the first breastfeed which is so important for both mother and baby, soon after birth.
According to my PhD research, when the first breastfeed is disrupted, it increases the risk of common breastfeeding complications such as nipple trauma, breast engorgement and mastitis.
Listening to the many similar stories of women who were denied their 3 Golden Hours and went on to experience painful nipple trauma, is what encouraged me to complete my PhD research
During my PhD research, I developed a gentle breastfeeding approach that significantly reduced the risk of nipple pain, low milk volume & latching issues.
The above 2 min story is shared by one of our members, Sarah who is now one of my senior team members about to embark on the Thompson Method Breastfeeding Academy.
By gaining knowledge of her own body, Sarah gained the confidence to continue breastfeeding, despite being told otherwise, and is still breastfeeding her beautiful boy at 18 months of age.
My aim is to share my gentle, evidence-based breastfeeding method with women all over the world in hopes of increasing breastfeeding rates (currently only 15% in the western world).
I’m proud to say that my life’s work has been compiled to create The Thompson Method Breastfeeding Program and I have been able to help thousands of women empower themselves and understand their rights within the hospital system so that they can bond with their babies through breastfeeding for as long as they choose.
