Social Regulation of the Stress Response in the Transitional Newborn: A Pilot Study 1

The purpose of the study was to explore relationships between caregiver holding and feeding behaviors and the transitional newborn infant’s cortisol response. Behaviors of 46 mothers, fathers, and their term transitional newborn infants were measured with the Index of Mother-Infant Separation (IMIS). Repeated measures of infant salivary cortisol were used to calculate area under the curve. A higher percentage of observations in which mother was holding infant was related to lower infant total cortisol during the first 6 hours after birth (r = −.24, p = .05, one-tailed).