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.

Making room for romance

Women love romance! Teenage love is all about the thrill of love-letters, the first kiss, getting a ride home on his motorbike, a plastic rose on Valentine’s Day. As women mature, so does romance. We flirt with suggestive conversation, share a sense of humour, and have fun simply enjoying our man’s company. This naturally includes chocolates, dates, flowers and flattery – making all that preparation and expense worth it! Before you became pregnant, flirtatious love blossomed into passionate, physical love that was strong enough to survive the trials of pregnancy. 

And now, you’re Mom and romance needs to be revamped.  Your relationship has changed, and little things that would have been ho-hum before are ‘romantic’ e.g. grocery shopping (with him carrying the baby in a kangaroo pouch), watching him talk to your baby, him driving like a pensioner when the baby is in the car, looking after the baby for you while you take a nap / shower / go to book club. 

Pepping-up your love life after birth is not easy – but it’s well worth the effort! Slipping into a pattern of sloth because you’re tired is understandable, but if you let it go on for too long, your man is going to take the easy way out and put the blame on you when your relationship fizzles. While you’re slopping around the house in slippers with black rings around your eyes, he’s back at work surrounded by women wearing pencil skirts and gucci heels! 

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to revive the va-va-voom in your love-life! I remember one special shopping morning I spent with my daughter a few months after her baby-girl was born. We giggled like school-girls in Cardies checking through all the Valentine’s Day paraphernalia and fanaticising about the creams and body chocolate. We went from store to store choosing bits and bobs from here and there to put into the little red boxes we bought from a stationary store. It was great venturing beyond the comfort-zone of superficial conversation. It motivated us both to make the effort to do something about Valentine’s Day.

Men, in my opinion, make the mistake of thinking that once we have had his baby, we are mothers – THEIR mothers! So way off the mark! Men (okay, not ALL men) become practical and instead of buying flowers, they buy you something like a new spare tyre or a clothes dryer! They think it’s easier to eat at home than get a baby-sitter and eat out. When you do go out, he takes you to Spur where it’s crowded with noisy kids! His idea of a ‘family outing’ may be to soccer stadium. Comfort-love may be spending the day with in-laws!

So what to do ladies?

Entertain your imagination and fantasise some ideas. Sift through these again and decide which are doable! Like an events-manager, put some ideas onto paper (this makes them real) and make to-do lists (this will get you going!). It’s vital that you get your head right – you need to see yourself following through, not just buying the ingredients or the goodies. You need to see the evening play out so that you’re focused.

A little bottle of Champaign (even if you’re breastfeeding) is essential to get you relaxed and in the mood. Don’t let little things that go wrong get you down. Stay focused. Follow your plan. Make it simple. Like a first date. Communicate. Slow dance – even if it’s on your balcony or in your living room. Create the mood. Romance your man – and he WILL romance you!  

Badges of birth

Parents usually don’t notice an odd shaped head on the first day after birth mostly because they’re focused on their ‘beautiful baby’ and relieved that the birthing ordeal is over. On the second day when they regain consciousness, parents scrutinize every inch of their baby and understandably worry about every little bump and mark. 

These badges of birth include lumps and bruises from forceps, unintentional superficial cuts from the surgeon’s scalpel, swelling from pressure, overlapping skull bones (this is an intentional allowance made by nature to help the baby’s head fit through the pelvis) and blood spots called petechiae. All these disappear on their own. 

A nasty bump called a cephalhaematoma looks worse than it really is. This is a slight bleed into the skin covering the skull bone and is limited to where one bone joins another. Because it takes a few weeks for this lump to disappear, simply cover it with a beanie and people will stop asking questions!

Babies have extra-ordinarily big heads (25% of their body size) with big appealing eyes – like Caspar the friendly ghost. This helpless and alluring look tugs at our heart-strings and makes us reach out to babies in all circumstances. The skull is custom-designed to accommodate your baby’s fast growing brain which will be 95% adult size by the time s/he is six! At every clinic visit, the nursing sister/ doctor/paediatrician will measure your baby’s head diameter and record the growth. S/he will also check the fontanelles (soft spots) during the first year. This will ensure that any changes are picked up early and potential complications avoided or minimised.  

Parents should be on the look-out for changes to their baby’s cry, body language, colour, muscle tone and sucking reflex. Learn to listen to your instincts because mothers know best. If your doctor tells you that you a neurotic mother and waves your concerns aside, ask for another opinion. The only person who has written the text book for your child is you and you know your child best! An invaluable lesson to learn at the start of your parenting career!