Gentle First Year: The Essential Guide to Mother and Baby Wellbeing in the First Twelve Months. Karen MacLeod Swan
Читать онлайн книгу.
– for as long as you both want to.
Another comforting touch is placing the flat of your hand on the baby’s tummy, avoiding the umbilical stump. Your warmth and the weight of your hand will be registered by the baby’s body, and there’s even evidence that suggests the baby will recognize the hand as yours – doctors have found that unborn babies kick more vigorously when their father’s hand is placed on the mother’s bump, as opposed to, say, the doctor’s, so there’ll be even more recognition with direct skin-to-skin contact.
Stroking the ‘Third Eye’
Try very gently stroking the area between the eyebrows in a downwards direction – stroking downwards is very sedating. This space relates to the ‘third eye’, and stroking it can invoke deep mental relaxation. In Ayurveda, there is a renowned massage which involves pouring warm oil onto the third eye for up to an hour. It is noted for bringing about a profound sense of peace, and I have found this to be true for the modified stroking variation I use to settle fractious babies and to calm anxious pregnant mothers.
Stroking the Aura
You could also gently mould your hand in a cup shape around your baby’s head and stroke her hair with your thumb. Then move your hand up to an inch away from the baby’s head and make a series of long strokes, starting from the nose and sweeping to the back of the head or as far as you can go. This method, where you do not need to actually touch the baby’s head, makes it ideal to calm premature babies. This is known as ‘stroking the aura’.
You can also use this method to take the heat off the baby’s head if you notice that her head is hot. Repeat as above, without touching the baby’s head or neck, and stroke in one direction only as this flow is very relaxing for the baby.
Sceptical? If you relax and close your eyes and do it on yourself for a minute or two, you should be able to register an almost tingly sensation, like an electric current. Do this for about five to twenty minutes, or as long as you like. It’s a loving, rhythmic sequence which can really get you involved with your baby’s physicality, until such time as the baby is ready for full-on cuddles.
‘Kangaroo Care’
When the baby can come out of the incubator for periods, take every opportunity to enjoy skin-on-skin touch. If you have been expressing your milk, you can now try direct breastfeeding. Equally, the father can try giving the baby a bottle of your milk. Both of you should try as much as possible to feed the baby without your shirts on as it’s important that the baby can smell you and learn to associate your smell with loving touch. Remember, there are lots of bright lights around incubators – the baby may even have worn goggles – so she won’t have terribly strong visual impressions of you. But she will have been able to smell you, so the closer she can actually get to you and your scent, the more relaxed she will be.
This intensive form of touch bonding is known as ‘kangaroo care’. It has been proven to bring remarkable positive responses in premature babies. So take every opportunity to hold your baby against your chest. Let her smell your skin, nuzzle into your neck, sleep on your tummy, look up into your eyes. Don’t put her down until the nurses are practically tugging her free. Every minute of skin-on-skin will make a difference.
Case History: Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for Premature Babies
This case history was contributed by paediatrician Dr G. Pramood Reddy MD DCH of the Fernandez Hospital for women and children in Hyderabad, India. The hospital was set up by my friend, Dr Evita Fernandez, whom I greatly admire for her dedicated work on the cutting edge of obstetric and neonatal care in India. It is Evita’s – and my – wish that Kangaroo Mother Care is provided as an absolute necessity in developing countries where two-thirds of the world’s low-birth-weight babies are born.
Rama Mani, a 35-year-old first-time mother, was treated for fertility issues for more than 14 years before she finally conceived. Unfortunately, during her pregnancy she suffered from many medical problems, including gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, fibroids and the problems that accompany an Rh-negative blood group! Despite the obstetric precaution of placing a cervical stitch to prevent premature labour, she went into labour at 30 weeks and delivered a baby girl weighing only 1.28kg. The baby was initially looked after in an incubator but as early as possible – by day 12 – she was moved to the Kangaroo Mother Care Ward.
Rama said that finally holding her baby next to her skin was one of the most joyous moments of her life. She was able to breastfeed her baby on demand and the baby gained weight notably faster than she would have if she were still in an incubator.
More importantly, Rama finally felt that she was able to nurture and mother her baby, and she confidently took her daughter home less than three weeks after the birth. Rama was so fascinated with the concept of Kangaroo Mother Care that she made her husband carry the baby around as well! Subsequently her daughter thrived and, despite her uncertain start to life, progressed rapidly to catch up with her full-term peers.
Play Bonding
Babies learn through play, but they also love through play, and so do we. Playing is an intrinsic part of bonding because to play with your baby is to delight in what she can do. There is no sophistication in baby play – no cultivated wit or superior irony – only the unbridled joy that comes with achievement and the thrill of the new. It is obvious, naïve, heartfelt and worn on the sleeves of both her babygro and your jumper.
Toys are great educational tools for the early months, but contact play – such as tickling or raspberry blowing – boasts benefits beyond the immediate joy of close touch. The skin is an organ which is stimulated by touch. The skin’s nerve centre, the brain, releases a rush of feel-good hormones called endorphins every time you squeeze, stroke or tickle your baby. In fact, there is mounting evidence that deprivation of touch in childhood can actually reprogramme the brain and contribute to antisocial behaviour in later life. So getting physical when you play with your baby has far-reaching benefits, as well as boosting self-esteem and making you both feel good.
The skin’s nerve centre, the brain, releases a rush of feel-good hormones called endorphins every time you squeeze, stroke or tickle your baby.
You can’t help but clap with delight as your baby builds her first tower; both giggle helplessly when you tickle her on the changing mat, and revel in the excitement when your baby does a ‘boo’ to your ‘peek’. Playing is like smiling when you’re sad – it instantly makes you feel better. Each time you play with your baby, the world is new to you again, fresh and waiting to be explored. So turn every waking moment into an opportunity to share a giggle or show something new. Each time you do, your soul is renewed, your heart grows larger and your love becomes deeper.
Breastfeeding
By rights, the issue of breastfeeding should be included in the ‘bonding’ section, as it is one of the most profoundly intimate and loving exchanges between mother and baby. The physical skin-on-skin contact helps the baby still feel closely connected to the mother’s body, which has protected and nurtured the baby during the pregnancy. This feeling of security cannot be underestimated as the baby has, of yet, no sense of being physically separate from its mother. To the baby’s limited sense of self, they are one person, and breastfeeding helps enormously in preserving that security. For the mother too, breastfeeding acts as a halfway house, as she adjusts to the physical separation from her child, which is, of course, the necessary result of birth.
From a practical point of view breast is best and easiest, and it’s always just the right temperature. It is easily digestible, organic and, best of all, free! Plus, it helps the mother regain her figure more quickly. Breastfeeding burns approximately 500 calories a day. The baby’s sucks stimulate the release of oxytocin from the mother’s brain – the hormone responsible for contractions in labour – helping the womb shrink back into the pelvis far more quickly, and the mother to lose tummy fat and get back into her jeans!
Of course, the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding are what we really want to shout about. As well as passing on vital antibodies, which boost the baby’s immune system,