Newborn infants who received skin‐to‐skin contact with fathers after Caesarean sections showed stable physiological patterns

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AYALA 
et

AL
.
and it remained stable throughout the study period, from 45 to 
120 minutes (Figure 1).
Heart rate was measured in beats per minute (bpm) (Table 2). The 
heart rate in the skin-to-skin group differed significantly from the cot 
group, by a mean of 10.5 beats per minute (150.5 ± 16.3 bpm versus 
140.0 ± 7.5 bpm (P = .002) (Figure 2). There were no significant dif-
ferences in heart rate over time in the skin-to-skin contact group.
In the cot group, there was a significant decrease in heart 
rate over time, from a mean of 143 ± 19 bpm at 45 minutes to 
138 ± 18 bpm at 120 minutes (P = .001).
The mean heart rate of the infants in the fathers' arms group was 
142.4 ± 14.2 bpm. This group showed minor variations in heart rate 
over time, with a transient decrease to a mean of 136 ± 38.66 bpm 
at 105 minutes (P < .001).
The infants' mean peripheral oxygen saturation showed no sta-
tistical differences between the intervention groups (Table 2), and 
the pattern during the study period is displayed in Figure 3. At the 
end of the study period, the mean levels of peripheral oxygen satu-
ration were nearly the same in the three groups.
3.4 | Wakefulness
Wakefulness was measured by the NBAS from 45 to 120 minutes 
after birth, with six observations, at 15-minute intervals, for each in-
fant. The infants' state of wakefulness is presented in Figure 4, while 
the mean values, standard deviations and p values for the outcome 
of the NBAS are listed in Table 3.
We compared the state of wakefulness in the three groups. The 
skin-to-skin group showed a higher state of wakefulness at 60 min-
utes than the infants in the fathers' arms group (P = .048) (Figure 4). 
TA B L E 2
Infant mean temperature, heart rate and oxygen saturation (SPO2) over the study period (45-120 minutes) for the infants cared 
for in a cot, in the father's arm and skin-to-skin on the father's chest