“lost a button, said to self. I’ll go FIND it!”
It’s easy to underestimate a baby. Keep testing your baby’s boundaries—and prepare to be amazed.
Yes, you should anchor your furniture to the walls and lock away your cleaning supplies. But that’s not the kind of safety I’m talking about here.
Your baby’s strongest need is to feel safe with you.
Children are exquisitely sensitive to their environments. If you create an environment of safety, love, and emotional stability, good things happen:
• Baby’s brain develops a healthy stress-response system, efficiently deploying and then reducing stress hormones as needed.
• With stress hormones in balance, baby’s neural circuits for learning and reasoning are protected. The cardiovascular and immune systems can function properly.
• Life’s smaller stresses (“No shirt! I don’t want it!”) become chances for growth, because supportive relationships buffer the negative effects of stress.
• Baby sees your healthy responses to stressful experiences and gets practice responding in healthy ways.
In a home with high levels of conflict, on the other hand, baby’s stress-response system is damaged. The system is either forced into a state of constant high alert or dulled into reacting too mildly to stress. Baby is unable to form a trusting attachment with caregivers (see page). Later, the child is more likely to be aggressive and delinquent. You might think babies are too young to understand that their parents are fighting. But babies younger than 6 months old can tell something is wrong. Babies’ blood pressure and heart rate rise, and so do their levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
How you fight matters
That doesn’t mean you can never fight. Not all parents’ fights hurt a child’s brain development. If, when you argue, you are supportive of your partner and show small signs of affection (see page), children learn that you can and will manage conflict in a way that preserves family harmony. If you are hostile with your partner, making threats and lobbing insults, or you’re physically aggressive, that’s when the conflicts harm kids.
Baby’s stress-response system develops over the first year
The kinds of things that stress baby (that is, increase her cortisol level) change as experiences fine-tune baby’s stress-response system.
| Newborn | Cortisol increases even if baby is picked up |
| 3 months | Being picked up is no longer stressful, but a doctor exam is |
| 6 months | Cortisol is less reactive during a doctor exam and shots |
| 9 months | Being left with a trusted babysitter barely increases cortisol |
| 13 months | Baby can be upset with no increase in cortisol |
Comfort newborn with the familiar
Thrust into a foreign place, who wouldn’t be comforted by the vestiges of home?
Newborns cry because they’re hungry or gassy or sleepy or hot or cold or wet. And they cry after you’ve checked all those things, for reasons that will remain a mystery. Baby’s dealing with a lot right now. You can’t always solve the problem to stop the crying, but you can comfort baby as he cries.
Scent
Researchers recorded the crying of newborns, a mere 30 minutes old, who were separated from their mothers for an hour. If the babies were exposed to the smell of the mother’s amniotic fluid—the protective sac of water baby had been floating in before birth—they cried less than thirty seconds. If not, they cried more than two minutes.
What else is a familiar scent to a newborn? Well, mom, for one. Baby can smell you starting at seven months in the womb—your body odor, even the lotion you rub on your belly each evening. (Might I recommend Almond Supple Skin Oil from L’Occitane? Mmm. Drop hints for your baby shower.) Soon after birth, dad’s scent can become familiar, too.
During the painful heel prick to draw baby’s blood, babies cried and grimaced much less if they smelled a familiar scent. Mama’s milk worked for breastfed babies. The scent of vanilla, which researchers previously had wafted under baby’s nose, worked as well.
Sound
If you sang or read to baby during your third trimester of pregnancy (see page), use that song or story to comfort baby right after birth.
Motion
Wrap baby to your body and walk (see page)—a very familiar cadence to baby.
Sniff, sniff? Newborns cry less
Median crying time during separation from mom, when exposed to her amniotic fluid vs. no exposure.
GOOD TO KNOW
Baby’s first three months are called “the fourth trimester.” The evolutionary theory is that babies could use more time in the womb—but they must be born early so their heads fit through the birth canal.
To ease baby’s transition outside the womb, parents try to replicate the noisy, cozy, warm, rock-and-roll conditions inside the womb. That’s why Harvey Karp’s “Five S’s” work so well to comfort baby: swaddling, side or stomach position, swinging, shushing, and sucking. See happiestbaby.com for details.
Babies are happy with almost constant contact in their first few months. Touch feels good!
Affectionate touch is essential for cognitive and emotional development. More technically: touch triggers the release of certain neurotransmitters, which soothe the nervous system and lower baby’s levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. Touch signals safety to the brain.
At the extreme negative end, babies not touched for days on end simply stare off into space. Their stress-response system is damaged, creating a cascade of negative effects.
Ways to get close
In baby’s first weeks, you’re in a haze just trying to get the hang of all this feeding, burping, napping, pooping, and generally keeping baby alive. Then, at some point in the day, all of those things have occurred, and you may wonder: Now what do we do?
Instead of setting baby in a swing to stare at mobiles, cuddle up:
Go skin to skin. Let your newborn, wearing only a diaper, rest on mom’s or dad’s bare chest. Snuggle with baby in bed the same way. Breastfeed topless at home. Your skin warms baby, but you can also put a blanket over the two of you. Being skin to skin, or nursing, when the doctor gives baby heel pricks or shots also lowers baby’s stress.
Wrap baby against your body. Use a soft-structured carrier, sling, or wrap while you run your errands, do some chores, or go for a walk. (After you’ve recovered from the labor, I mean—don’t go anywhere at first, if you can help it!) Save the stroller for when baby gets heavy or you need to haul stuff.
Massage baby each day. Researchers found that 4-month-olds who got a daily eight-minute massage were
• in a better mood,
• less anxious and stressed,
• more attentive, and
•