Why the newborn hat is put on

In most countries of the world, it is usual to put a newborn hat on the head as soon as it is born. Traditionally this was done to prevent the baby's cooling and the dreaded hypothermia. But does it have any other meaning? In Guiainfantil.com we tell you why you have to put hat on the newborn. The r

In most countries of the world, it is usual to put a newborn hat on the head as soon as it is born. Traditionally this was done to prevent the baby's cooling and the dreaded hypothermia. But does it have any other meaning? In Guiainfantil.com we tell you why you have to put hat on the newborn.

The real reason to put hat on the newborn

While the baby is in the womb, it is the mother that regulates the temperature, but at the time of birth, one of the first changes that the baby notes is the change of state in the one who was inside his mother, stops being immersed in liquid to be in contact with the air, and it must be his own body that begins to regulate his body temperature.

It will take a few months for the baby to develop the mechanisms that allow her to regulate her body temperature autonomously.

Given these changes, and taking into account that the head of the newborn is disproportionately large compared to the size of your body, it is usual to place the baby a hat after childbirth, to alleviate that temperature difference. By representing almost a quarter of your body, it is in this area where you lose more heat.

In fact in most hospitals, it is the health professionals themselves who put the baby on this hat as soon as they are born and before giving it to their mother.

Once the baby adapts to life outside the uterus, the caps would not be necessary.

Other voices point out that this tradition of putting hat on newborns does not make much sense since currently the most common is to place the newborn directly in skin-to-skin contact with his mother at birth to avoid that loss of heat , before washing it (so as not to remove the vernix caseosa that covers the baby's body to protect it from the cold) and before dressing it too.

Therefore, if the clothes are not necessary, it would not be necessary to place these hats, since with skin-to-skin contact with their mother it would be enough.

Another reason why it would be usual to place the hat on newborns would be to disguise the irregular shape of the head with which some babies are born after crossing the birth canal. Or also to hide the indomitable hair that some babies wear right after birth.