Kim Kardashian was the first person to have skin contact with her baby girl.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were in the delivery room as their surrogate gave birth to their child on Tuesday- and Kim was reportedly the first person to hold her new baby girl.

Celebrity news site TMZ reports the 37-year-old was the first person to have skin-to-skin contact with her baby. Meanwhile, Kanye – waiting behind a curtain while their unnamed surrogate gave birth – came out to hold his daughter moments later.

Kim wanting to be the first person to hold her new bub isn’t really surprising, given the most up-to-date knowledge of what’s best for infants’ development.

Several recent studies show skin-to-skin contact - that is the unwrapped baby placed on a bare chest - immediately after birth has both physical and mental benefits for the newborn. It's also recommended this contact be uninterrupted for a decent amount of time, with some medical sites suggesting one to two hours.

The immediate contact has been shown to regulate the baby's breathing and heartbeat and help make the experience of adjusting from the womb to the outside world less stressful. It also allows mums to bond with their babies, as the "love hormone" oxytocin is released - in dad's too, so you don't have to have given birth to the baby to feel it.

According to US egg donor and surrogacy agency Creative Love, whether the biological mum is the first person to hold her newborn baby is something that will be agreed upon in a birth plan.

They suggest other times a surrogate may "like to spend a few minutes alone with the baby after birth to 'say goodbye' and experience a necessary closure before handing him or her over to the parents".

Listen: Midwife Cath talks about obsession and fear over vaginal birth. (Post continues.)

The agency recommends that parents and the surrogate talk about and agree upon what will happen in the delivery room as early on in the process as possible.

While we can't know what Kim, Kanye and their surrogate agreed upon, TMZ reports the woman was able to have some contact with the 3.3kg baby after giving birth.

It's reported Kim's mum, Kris Jenner, and her sisters were also at the hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA, but not in the delivery room. The centre is where Kim gave birth to North, four, and Saint, two, as well as where Kourtney gave birth to her children.