Gentle First Year: The Essential Guide to Mother and Baby Wellbeing in the First Twelve Months. Karen MacLeod Swan
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are sheared to an extra-short length but, if you like, you can place the sheepskin under the baby’s cot sheet.
To make the big cot seem smaller, roll up two clean cellular pram blankets and lay them either side of the baby’s waist, like mini bolsters. These help the baby feel more secure and confined, again echoing the womb. Equally, you can buy special baby mats, which have attached bolsters at the sides.
Another tip is to roll a larger cellular cot blanket lengthways and loop it in a U shape. The U-bend should pat up against the baby’s bottom, with the baby’s legs hanging bent over the blanket and the blanket running up the baby’s sides. This really helps the baby to feel held.
If you have a cuddle cloth, tuck it next to your skin in your bra so that it absorbs your smell. Then you can tie this to the cot and help reduce any separation anxiety.
SWADDLING
One of the hardest things for the new parent – particularly the new dad – is getting used to the tiny proportions of the newborn body. An adult’s big hands and strong arms can easily feel clumsy when that little body is flailing and wriggling about. But swaddling can really minimize that awkwardness. Swaddling is an age-old custom that crosses nearly every culture in the world – from Eskimo babies in sealskins, African babies in kakoi slings to Japanese babies swaddled into the silken folds of obi wraps. Swaddling is fantastic for helping a baby feel secure. Keeping the arms and legs bound in a secure wrapping mimics the confines of the baby’s beloved womb. When the baby is born, one of the most pronounced birth reflexes is the Moro, or startle reflex, when the baby suddenly throws out her arms and legs when startled. The Moro reflex is an involuntary response to threat and acts as the earliest form of ‘fight or flight’ response. This is generally more pronounced in boys than girls, and begins to fade away gradually from three weeks. It can be alarming for the baby who, at this point, has no idea that those flailing arms and legs are actually her own and often scratches herself, hence the need for scratch mittens.
I recommend swaddling the baby in a cellular cotton blanket for the first three weeks to give her the feeling of the continuity of being held in a womb. After this time, the baby usually starts to wriggle out of it. You can then move on to swaddling the baby under the arms so that the body and legs feel held but her arms can stretch out. After a couple of days of contented sprawled sleeping, the baby is ready to go into the now-popular baby sleeping bag.
note
Only ever use a cellular blanket for swaddling, as the intrinsic holes within the cellular blanket will provide a crucial air supply should the blanket go over the baby’s face. The risk of this increases as the baby gets bigger and stronger, as the increased wriggling dislodges the blanket off the shoulders and moves it up around the face, risking suffocation.
how to swaddle
1 Take a cellular blanket and fold one corner up to the opposite corner, making a triangle.
2 Place the triangle so that the longest straight edge is arranged at the top.
3 Lay the baby down on the centre of the blanket, with her shoulders just an inch or so below this long edge.
4 Check that the lip of the blanket doesn’t protrude so high above the shoulders as to cover the baby’s mouth when she turns her head to the sides.
5 Take one corner from the right or left (whichever is shortest, depending upon how centrally you’ve placed the baby on the blanket) and snugly wrap it around the baby’s body. Make sure the baby’s arm is placed down at the sides, and pull the blanket down and around so that the corner can be tucked under the baby’s bottom. Keep the tuck as flat as possible so it’s not bulky and uncomfortable beneath the baby’s body.
6 Pull over the remaining corner – again in a downward direction, with the baby’s arm down at the corresponding side, and tuck under the baby’s bottom. Again, keep the tuck as flat as possible.
a new way to handle babies
A new school of thought amongst maternity nurses in Los Angeles promotes extremely gentle and slow handling of babies. The traditional way to pick up babies is to lift them up to you and then bring them in close, but this new method involves bringing the baby in close to you before lifting them through the air.
Water Bonding
A lot of baby bonding is about summoning the sensations and security of the womb, and much of that can be re-created in water. I have long been a proponent of water births, believing them to be a more gentle transition for the newborn from the womb to the outside world. But even after the birth event itself, I often use water to soothe unsettled babies. One of the joys of my practice is giving cranio-sacral treatment to a baby while in a warm and safe baby pool.
THE DIVE REFLEX
Nine months in the amniotic fluids equips babies with a diving reflex, which is very strong at birth but fades over the following months as they rapidly adapt from a watery to an airy environment. Babies are fully capable and relaxed when momentarily submerged; their pronounced dive reflex kicks in and they hold their breath automatically. Try it yourself – if you blow onto your baby’s face, you’ll see she automatically holds her breath.
Test your baby’s dive reflex by blowing onto her face. You’ll see she automatically holds her breath.
BABY SWIM CLASSES
The dive reflex can be retained if the baby is exposed to water submersion on a regular basis. It would be wonderful if you could find a specialist baby swim class (I recommend them from four months onwards – see Resources). As well as keeping up the dive reflex, the best of these classes also place a strong emphasis on baby water safety – teaching them how to turn in the water, float on their backs (and therefore, breathe!) and how to hold on to the side should they fall into a pond or pool.
It’s natural that you might feel apprehensive at the thought of your baby going under water, but you’ll be surprised at how much she loves the feeling of weightlessness – it’s the only time her little body is fluid and synchronized! She may well come up with her eyes wide and smiling, as babies don’t shut their eyes underwater.
BATHTIME BONDING
On a smaller, more intimate scale, water bonding in the bath can play a part in your daily routine. My grandmother in India always said babies should be bathed before midday, not at night, as this closes off the chakras (the seven energy centres on the midline of the body) and inhibits vital growth and repair during sleep. If you can bathe your baby in the morning or at lunchtime, so much the better. However, I appreciate that this is not convenient for the Western lifestyle, where bathtime is often delayed until early evening when working mothers or fathers get home. The bonding opportunities bathtime presents are of course far more precious and must be respected. Equally, you may have another child who is already in an evening bathtime routine or is at school during the day and so can only bathe in the evening. If this is the case, a good compromise is to try and finish bathing before 6pm.
One to two drops of pure lavender essential oil mixed in with milk (so that it doesn’t sit as a film on top of the water) and then added to the running water makes a lovely aromatic bath and will induce a gentle sleepiness just before bedtime.
a water bonding tip
A wonderful mother–baby bonding exercise is floating your baby on her back whilst maintaining eye contact. You can do this in the bath or in a pool (but if the pool has cool water, invest in a neoprene baby wetsuit – see Resources for details).
Touch Bonding
Of all the bonding methods, this has to be my favourite. Regular baby massage soothes the soul of every mother and child, and really forges a powerful empathy and trust between the two. I advocate daily baby massage and think the ideal time is immediately after the bath. No fancy oils are needed, just a good quality base oil such as extra virgin olive oil or sweet almond oil. Apart from the immunological and muscular benefits of the massage, these oils will really nourish and hydrate the baby’s skin, which can look dry and flaky in the first few weeks after birth.
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