RealTalkAJ

I’ll be answering the question “why does a doctor spank a newborn baby”.

Let me make this disclaimer, I’m in no way an official child care expert.

I can only share a few successful stories and supported research to answer these topics.

Just wanted to get that out the way, but let’s move on.

It’s a practice that I believed was the way it worked when I first learned about reproducing.

If you were like me than you were also like most who think doctors do this in delivery.

Let’s learn a little bit more about this.

why does a doctor spank a newborn baby

It’s a myth. That’s actually a very outdated method that doctors used to do in order to help the baby cry after birth. The current method is Towel Rubbing.

Because the intended goal is to get the baby to simulate crying it’s relieving to see that care providers found a much safer method.

why do doctors rub babies in towels

This took some research on my end and it confirms what the doctors are trying to do for the baby, get them to cry.

I found a few users on Quora that had concerns about the towel rubbing method seemed pretty rough on the baby.

However one user put things in perspective pretty well when comparing how light their uncomfortable experience of toweling must be when compared to exiting the vagina.

The goal is to start the baby crying which should clear it’s lungs of any fluids and make sure their breathing system works properly.

Matter of fact the problem comes if your baby doesn’t cry after the doctor tries their methods of provoking an episode.

As a method that wakes the baby’s brain up if it’s still sleeping past birth is rubbing it’s back.

The doctor will do this and it’ll usually fix the problem if there is one.

Premature Umbilical Cord Removal

There was a point in time when doctors would mistakenly remove the umbilical cord early from the baby and mother.

This was an act that was dangerous for both parties because it could cause injury.

I’ll be lying if I tell you I understand the placenta in full detail, but I can refer you to more educated people:

You can see how harmful that could be to the baby if it’s removed irresponsibly, and it has a history.

These type of issues with babies and their mothers was in observation since 1801 but since then has gotten much better.

Final Thoughts

This seemingly humiliating experience has meaning.

Although spanking babies aren’t done anymore it’s still very informative to learn how much effect it has on its breathing.

You take into account that there’s plenty of problems that could be underlying in the baby that’ll go unnoticed without checking their lungs.

It’s great that we as a society have improved our methods to induce crying with a less painful towel rub.

I’m all for everything that improves safety on people being served.