After birth, the newborn is dried and wrapped to prevent heat loss by which mechanism?

• A. Conduction
• B. Convection
• C. Evaporation
• D. Radiation

Answer: (C)

Evaporative heat loss is the key idea here. At birth the baby's skin is still damp with amniotic fluid. When that moisture evaporates, it absorbs heat from the body's surface to change from liquid to vapor, producing a cooling effect. Drying the newborn removes most of the surface moisture, so there’s less water to evaporate and therefore less evaporative cooling. Wrapping then helps trap warm air around the body to reduce other forms of heat loss, but the immediate reason heat loss is reduced by drying is to prevent evaporation.