The newest trend in rooming in is "Immersion Bathing" with newborns where they do not bath the baby for 8-24 hours after delivery.  According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, the medical benefits of immersion bathing newborns is amazing. 

 

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Bathinet oct 2019

 

"Her research looked at Advocate Sherman Hospital births for one month during 2015, evaluating how many full-term, healthy babies had hypothermia and hypoglycemia as a baseline. Buss also looked at breastfeeding rates. Sherman's Family Birthing Center rolled out a policy in February 2016 where nurses waited about 14 hours to give full-term, healthy newborns a bath, Buss said. Any blood is wiped off but, a sponge bath is delayed, she said. A month later, Buss began comparing births from February 2016 to the baseline statistics and was surprised at the numbers, she said. The percentage of babies with hypothermia decreased from 29 percent to 14 percent after baths were delayed, Buss said. Hypoglycemia rates dropped from 21 percent to 7 percent in the first month, she said. Breastfeeding rates increased from 51 percent to 71 percent, she found. Nine months later, the figures were even more startling, Buss said. Hypothermia rates dropped to 7 percent and hypoglycemia rates dropped to 4 percent while breastfeeding rates increased to 78 percent, she said. "It's pretty amazing," Buss said."

bathinet 3

 

As this concept has emerged, Convergint-IMS has been at the forefront in working hand in hand with our vendor to design an in-room mobile bathing unit. The "Bathinet" has made infant bathing in-room an efficient part of the workflow. There are reports that say immersion bathing has been somewhat controversial and clinical staff are hesitant but there is also lots of emerging documentation that this is becoming a leading initiative.