Abracadabra...

•  Let your newborn lie skin to skin between your breasts to discover in his/her own time and way where your nipple is and how to feed

•  Don’t touch the back of your newborn’s head during feeding – this will stimulate a reflex to jerk his/her head backwards giving the impression that s/he ‘refuses to feed’

•  Sometimes babies just need to cry! When you’ve checked everything and baby is still crying, gently moan with your baby, cooing and gently singing a lullaby

•  Rocking stimulates the happiness hormone in the brain – that’s why children (and adults) enjoy swinging. Make a hammock out of a blanket and swing your baby with your partners help

•  Newborns love to be with their mothers. The traditional way of carrying the baby on the back solves many problems. Try it sometime! 

•  Keep your baby’s head covered with a beanie in winter. The head is disproportionately big and unprotected with hair, which means that your baby can lose a lot of body heat this way. Cold hands does not necessarily mean that your baby is cold or tired

•  Don’t over-burp your baby. If bottle feeding, when baby stops drinking, this is a good time to burp. If you’re breast-feeding burp once when swopping from one breast to the other

•  Don’t dress a newborn in yellow – it makes them look jaundiced when they’re not and jaundiced babies look more yellow than they really are

•  If you’re worried that your baby is running a temperature, kiss the back of his/her neck rather than touching the forehead. The kiss will alert you whether to worry or not 

•  If you’re worried about bathing a slippery baby, don’t soap the baby before putting him/her into the water. Simply add aqueous cream to the water, or soap baby in the water.  

Life with baby is trial and error. Be practical, don’t panic and use a bit of magic. It works wonders – especially for you! 

Coping with crying

There are specific cries for each age group: the new-born, the baby and the toddler. Crying can be described as wailing, whimpering or sobbing. Constant crying is like a telephone or alarm that won’t stop ringing! Its torture and enough to try your patience to breaking point – which is a big danger for baby and parent because in extreme circumstances it can lead to the ‘shaken-baby-syndrome’.   

Crying tugs on our emotions – it makes us uncomfortable and we want it to stop. Crying is a new-born’s survival tactic to alert mom that it’s time for another feed, nappy change or simply human contact. A new mother has to learn not only how to see to the physical needs of her baby, she also has to learn how to absorb her baby’s distress, and not to add to it by becoming distressed herself! There isn’t a book or blog, course, college or university degree can teach a new mother how to do this – she can only learn this through experience.  

The good news is that mothers quickly learn to understand their baby’s cry: whether it’s for hunger, discomfort, pain, illness, boredom or loneliness. It doesn’t help to leave a new-born to cry because this only teaches a baby to cry. When a new-borns needs are met, the baby learns trust and a baby who trusts mom quickly learns that when s/he hears mom’s reassuring voice that help is on its way. 

Newborns don’t like to be disturbed – they only want to feed and sleep. Bathing, too much fussing or when they are ‘passed around’ to visitors can make them cranky. Sounds crazy but an overtired baby can cry for hours! It’s as though their own crying keeps them awake! 

Tricks to soothe a crying baby:

•  Swaddle, swing or sing to your baby 

•  Be prepared for the evening when baby gets cranky by having dinner ready and the house tidy by 5 pm

•  Babies are soothed by warm water – put him/her in the bath with daddy 

•  Take baby for a walk in the stroller – getting out the house and the exercise will do you good

• Make sure your baby is warm but not hot

•  Call a friend to give you a break if you’re all alone and feel that you are reaching ‘breaking point’.

Rule of thumb: A baby with a loud, lusty cry is usually fine! Parents often rush these babies to the ER thinking there must be something seriously wrong. Unless your baby is crying because of a fall, there usually isn’t. But if your baby whimpers as though even just crying is too much of an effort, if your baby is cold and clammy or the fontanelles (soft spots on top of the head) are bulging, THEN you need to go to ER promptly! (This is rare). 

Coping with crying is something you are going to have to do for a long time. As your baby grows older, s/he will cry for many different reasons. Children need constant reassuring, and you will learn with experience that every child cries differently. Crying is an emotional need – we all (including men) need to do it from time to time. Crying washes your eyes, un-pops the cork of pent-up emotions, and induces sleep!  

The chemistry of love

A young woman phoned into a radio programme the other day asking for advice. She is in a relationship with a ‘player’ and having second thoughts about this. At first it was okay because all she wanted from him was a baby. But now she has fallen in love with the guy and resents him being with other women. She wanted to know if she should pursue this relationship or leave him. 

Some callers suggested that she should have gone to a ‘sperm bank’ but most agreed that she should leave the guy. Nobody however, addressed the real issue: why did she fall in love with him in the first place? 

When a couple make love, the pleasure they enjoy from having sex also comes from the brain. Va-va-voom is made by hormones like dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin. It’s these hormones that keep a couple together and coming back for more! Dopamine is the ‘happiness hormone’, oxytocin is the ‘love hormone’ and vasopressin is the ‘protection hormone’. 

These hormones come from the ‘limbic’ system of the brain otherwise known as the ‘emotional centre’. This part of the brain is described by Lesley Kenton in her book ‘Passages to Power’ as “the most primitive part of the brain that deals with emotions and our sense of smell, with passion and all the unconscious interfaces that take place between mind and body.” 

Dopamine is the ‘feel good’ hormone that is secreted when we do something exciting or rewarding. When dopamine is secreted during sex, it creates the desire to do it again. This is because for a woman to get pregnant, she needs to have sex often. Oxytocin creates the desire in both men and women to have sex and oxytocin helps them to bond – in other words, fall in love. Falling in love is also important for the survival of the baby that comes from this union because a baby needs a mother and a father who love each other. If couples love each other, they will love their child! 

Finally vasopressin in men is what oxytocin is to women. This hormone, besides bonding him to his sexual partner, has other important functions such as controlling blood pressure and kidney function. Vasopressin during sex produces a partial bond with every woman he has sex with. More than one sex partners can therefore minimalise a man’s ability to commit to a relationship if he keeps changing partners! 

It makes sense then why her ‘player’ boyfriend is not prepared to give up any of his other girlfriends and why she fell in love with him. If couples understood this, they could understand more about relationships and why they keep getting hurt.