Nothing the baby does makes sense,
except from the viewpoint of the mother’s body (if it is not close).
Nils Bergman.

Being born involves a process of “awakening”. In the womb, babies are sleepy; passing through the birth canal brings a hormonal release that causes them to wake up and spend the first two hours of life in a state of “quiet alertness”.

Thus, placed skin-to-skin on their mother, they can crawl to the breast on their own, guided by their sense of smell, look mother in the eye and initiate breastfeeding.

In turn, the baby’s movements and behaviour facilitate changes in the mother’s brain that make her feel closer to her baby and make it easier and more pleasant for her to care for him.

Skin-to-skin means that the new-born baby is in very little clothing or just a nappy, placed on the mother’s (or grandmother’s or other familiar person’s) bare chest or the father’s torso. A clothed baby will not feel the same effect as a naked baby; the more of the baby’s skin that comes into contact with another person’s skin, the more oxytocin the baby’s brain produces making it feel more comfortable and more confident.

Babies are also very good at sensing the emotions of the people around them. Sometimes they cry at length if they notice that their mother or caregivers are angry or sad. They come into this world fully prepared to sense emotions in others and in themselves. They can feel a range of intense emotions, even though they cannot understand the content of the emotion and its relationship to what is happening around them.

Since they cannot think and have yet to develop intellectual ability, new-borns feel emotion with their whole body. That is why they need the mother so much to regulate their emotions. They cannot process their own emotions except through close bodily contact with their mother’s body.

Every time a mother responds sensitively to her baby’s cry or request, by soothing and comforting, she is assisting in regulating emotions and by repeating this time and time again a “safe space” is created where a baby expects and trusts that his mother will always be there offering care and love. All these memories, and especially the emotions, remain engraved in the baby’s memory. Babies remember these “bodily” emotions and the response received from their mother, father or other people very close and dear to them. This creates a memory imprint of comfort and embrace.

Every baby is unique. Getting to know their tastes, their personality, their way of being and responding takes time. That is why these first weeks are an ideal time for getting to know each other and require the maximum possible maternal presence.

The bond between mothers, fathers and babies begins in pregnancy. It has to do with loving the growing baby, wanting to care for and get to know him or her, imagining what life with him or her will be like and dreaming about the baby. At birth there is a transformation of this bond and the beginning of a relationship: however much the baby may have been wanted and loved in the womb, in a certain sense he or she is a “stranger” arriving at home. Time must be spent getting to know and love the baby as it is, leaving behind the fantasy of the ideal or perfect baby. This process of getting to know each other requires time and attention, close dedication during the first months of life, when the baby is most dependent.
Above all, the baby needs to feel accompanied.

New-borns whose mothers respond immediately to their crying in the first weeks hardly cry at all by the time they are one year old. Many people think that in order for the baby to become an independent child and adult, it should get used to independence from the beginning. The opposite is true: the way to raise independent adults is to provide for all their needs when they are most dependent: at birth.

Over the first days, weeks and months, the baby experiences different sensations: hunger, sleep, heat, discomfort… Every time babies cry and mother (or father) comforts and calms them, they learn something: “Mummy (or daddy) is near and takes care of me”. In this way they feel loved and their self-esteem increases.

They will grow up feeling that life is worth living, that they deserve to be loved, they will know how to trust others and will in the same way trust in their own social skills.
When a baby feels loved, it learns to love.

But no one can give what they have not received. That is, if the mother or father has suffered from a lack of affection in childhood, they may sometimes feel that they want to run away instead of attending to their child’s needs for affection and contact. At such times it is good to seek help and companionship – as the African proverb says, it takes a village to raise a child. So you can turn to the help and company of grandparents, aunts, siblings and family friends to take care of the baby, but always understanding that a baby’s need is genuine and loving, that babies do not manipulate or fool their mothers. Babies want to be always accompanied by their mothers. Babies always want to be accompanied and close to them because that is how they know they are loved. Allowing them to do this as much as possible in those first weeks of life helps them to develop their capacity to love to the maximum. Their empathy and emotional intelligence depend to a large extent on respecting this powerful beginning, what they call the “babymoon”, which is like a honeymoon with the baby: a very important time for building a loving relationship that will last a lifetime.

Ask any mother what she considers essential to “being a mother” and she will not hesitate to answer: love.
R. Schaffer.

Cuddling and caressing, often, several times a day, on demand, whenever the baby or the mother wants: that is breastfeeding.

Every time a mother puts her baby to her breast, she is caressing it and directly transmitting her unconditional love, nourishing the child’s body and soul, comforting, calming and loving it. The baby thus feels loved, wanted, and builds its self-esteem and trust in life.

Neuroscientists now believe that breastfeeding is like programming. It’s not just the milk; it’s the whole interaction. At the breast, the baby smells the mother, hears and listens to her, caresses her, looks into her eyes and sees her face (clearly from birth), touches her, holds her hand, moves with her if the mother walks or sits up. Mother and baby synchronise their heartbeat, breathing and a whole series of biological functions. Much more than just food is given during breastfeeding: the baby receives comfort, warmth and love.

Breastfeeding requires trust: in one’s own body, which produces the milk the baby needs, and in the baby, who knows how to ask for nourishment and comfort when they need it. Supporting breastfeeding requires building mothers’ confidence, which is difficult in a world that massively lost its breastfeeding culture in the middle of the last century. The role of breastfeeding support groups is key to building a mother’s confidence.

If a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed, it is important to help her, so that the only thing her baby lacks is milk. In other words, give the bottle as if it were the breast: on demand, always in the arms and if possible skin to skin, changing sides every feed, preferably given by the mother and with an extra dose of caresses and hugs to compensate. Breastfeeding is what nature intended for the construction of a healthy bond between mothers and children.

The postpartum period is a very intense period in life. In many traditional cultures, this time, known as “quarantine” was when the family and the community were involved in caring for the pregnant woman so that she had nothing to do but rest and breastfeed her baby.

Puerperium is a precious time to get to know and meet each other. The baby is born so immature that it needs to spend almost as much time as it spent in the womb very close to its mother’s body, what some call “exterior-gestation”. It will take about eight or nine months for the baby to begin to move around and crawl or walk, to want to start to move a little away from its mother. Physical proximity makes it easier for the two brains, the mother’s and the baby’s, to synchronise in many ways.

A new-born baby is comforted and reassured by its mother’s smell and is the way the new-born knows that mother is close by. It has been proven that the intense smell of the new-born in the first days of life also produces changes in the woman’s brain, helping her to feel like a mother and care for her child. Skin-touch and smell are the most developed senses of the new-born: smelling their mother, taking her breast, and feeling her touch and caresses is practically all babies need.

The postpartum period requires delicate sensitivity. On a hormonal level, the onset of breastfeeding brings about changes in the mother’s brain, which makes a woman super-sensitive to any signal from the baby. This leads to constant, almost obsessive monitoring, especially if you are a first-time mother, and it is difficult to think about anything else. The hormonal transition takes time and during those first two weeks or more it is common to have emotional ups and downs and to feel very frail, tearful and emotional.

Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott was the first to describe this state of “maternal preoccupation” as transient and necessary to care for the baby at the beginning of life, and pointed out that during the first months mother and baby should be considered as a unit. Research has actually with time proven that, biologically mother and baby do indeed remain a unit for a long time after birth.

There is a whole series of invisible but biologically powerful events happening between mother and baby in that first month of life that facilitate bonding and enhance the survival and health of the new-born.

When a baby is born, a family is born, and the postpartum period is also a time of intra-familial adjustment. How the mother was treated as a baby has a huge influence on how she cares for her new-born. Mothers who were not well cared for emotionally by their own mothers may find it especially difficult to stay with their babies and attend to their needs. This is very common because many women who are mothers today grew up in the days when not holding babies and not attending to their cries was encouraged.

Being brought up in this way makes the postpartum period very difficult. That is why it is so important to have help and a listening ear and to allow yourself time to get through the postpartum period.