Rooming In

On our Mother Baby (postpartum) unit, Beaumont-Dearborn supports and encourages rooming in. This means keeping mom, baby and family together during the first few days of life. Being together with your newborn is the best way to create and strengthen the mother/baby/family bond. Spending as much time together as possible will help you to get to know your new baby, learn how to care for them and enable you to provide the soothing comfort they need. Rooming-in enhances bonding and the ability to breastfeed. 

Benefits of rooming in

  • newborns can smell you, hear you and feel your comforting touch more often when they room in
  • as a new mother, your body produces a hormone called Oxytocin which encourages bonding, helps mom feel content and promotes nurturing
    • holding your baby skin-to-skin as much as possible in those early days will increase Oxytocin levels and trigger mothering feelings
  • spending time together helps you get to know your new baby, learn how to care for them and enable you to provide the soothing comfort they need
    • babies who room-in cry less and have a more regulated and quiet sleep pattern
  • you and your baby will sleep and rest better when rooming in
    • mothers sleep an average of 30 minutes longer when their babies are with them
  • stress levels are decreased for both mom and baby due to less crying, startling and the increased ability of mom to sooth her crying infant
  • allows the nursing staff to provide unique teaching opportunities to parents of newborns including bathing, diapering and breastfeeding education
  • mothers are able to learn their baby’s unique feeding cues quickly, which allow them to feed colostrum or “liquid gold” more frequently
    • frequent feedings ensure a good milk supply and promotes long term breastfeeding success
    • mothers who room-in produce mature milk sooner and exclusively breastfeed longer
  • rooming-in allows breastfed infants to nurse more efficiently which helps minimize infant weight loss in the early days
  • newborn jaundice levels are decreased due to frequent feeding and increased stools