Extended Contact After Birth: Time-Controlled or Self-Regulatory?
1 College of Nursing, J-197, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610
To the Editor.
Lamb has written a thought-provoking article in which he reviewed the research on early contact and maternalinfant bonding.1 He concluded that the methodologies were impoverished and the conclusions were based on equivocal findings. Although his critique merits consideration, it is important to realize that the contact opportunities were self-regulatory in only one of the many studies he reviewed.2 In the context of birth, self-regulatory means that the mother and infant remain together after birth in the same bed, or at least adjacent ones, and are allowed to interact with each other on cue and to satiety.




