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Bonding with your baby

Attachment is a deep, lasting bond that develops between a caregiver and child during the baby’s first few years of life.

Mother and father kiss their newborn baby

The best way to describe bonding is that it’s a very special ‘process.’ It is the attachment formed between a baby and their parent. Bonding is the loving and protective feelings a parent has for their baby. It’s the instinctual feelings of protection that sends you running to your crying baby, to soothe and cuddle them. It’s important to know that for some it can happen as soon as you set eyes on your baby, or it may gradually grow over the first few weeks and months, strengthening each time you care for your baby. This attachment between a baby and parent is vital to the growth and development of a baby’s mind and body. It gives a baby a strong foundation of trust, which they’ll carry with them into adulthood.

How you can bond with your baby

Luckily, the way in which we bond with a baby lies in the vital but simple tasks we perform on a daily basis in caring for our baby. Bonding occurs through the following activities:

By regularly holding and cuddling with your baby.
By chatting and talking to your newborn throughout the day. Even sharing a nursery rhyme during a diaper change promotes bonding. Babies LOVE the sound of your voice. Look into your baby’s eyes as you talk with her as it can really strengthen the level of understanding between you.
By gazing lovingly into your newborn baby’s eyes as you cradle her in your arms when feeding.
By gently stroking your baby’s skin. Babies love to be touched and they cherish being touched by their parents. Take a baby massage class to learn loving ways to touch your baby and to strengthen your bond.
By cuddling with your baby often, you are giving her the opportunity to get to know your smell. A baby’s sense of smell is very strong. She’ll be able to recognize your smell in a very short period of time if you spend time holding her.
By responding immediately to your baby’s cries. Over time you’ll get to know the difference between these cries. You can never give a baby too much love.
By holding your baby regularly throughout the day. This is made much easier nowadays, as there are a good variety of baby slings and carriers available.
By imitating your baby’s sounds and facial expressions.
By trying to make time for frequent skin-to-skin contact. This type of touch brings a feeling of warmth and security to you both. Touch gives your baby an overall sense of well being.

Bonding takes time

Even if you felt that strong attachment straight away, you will still need to work at strengthening it every day. If you didn’t bond straight away, try and take it easy on yourself and have patience. Over time, by caring for your baby’s basic needs, it will gradually happen.

Challenges to bonding

Pain from a difficult birth – follow the advice from your doctor as to how to manage your pain. If pain management is not working, ask for an alternative plan. Take care of yourself and rest so you can physically recover from the birth and bond with your baby
Having a baby in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital can be very distressing and can make bonding a little challenging. Ask staff to help you find ways to care for your little one. Ask if they have a “kangaroo care” program in which babies spend time lying against their mother or fathers chest. It can be overwhelming and scary to hold your baby when they have tubes and medical equipment hooked up to them – but you can do it. The staff are there to help you feel comfortable and confident. Over time, you will adjust to the ICU and you will look back with amazement and pride when you remember how you learned to hold and care for your little one in such a challenging environment.
Exhaustion – it is hard work looking after a baby. Ask your partner, family or friends for support as you adjust to life with a little baby.
Stress - try to reduce the overall amount of stress in your life so you can have the emotional energy to “bond” with your baby.
Lack of support – be as proactive and creative as you can to get the support you need. Ask friends and relatives for help. Join a new mother’s group, or an online support group, invite other mums and their babies over for morning tea, read the newspaper to find support groups etc. Actively seek out the support you need. It will benefit both you and your baby.
Having a baby that cries all of the time.

· A lack of energy.

· General irritability

· A loss of enthusiasm.

· Feeling overwhelmed all the time.

· Feeling unable to cope for an extended period.

If you think you may have postpartum depression please make an appointment with your doctor. Ask family and friends for extra support. Please don’t feel embarrassed about it – people will be more than happy and willing to support, love, and care for you and your baby. Don’t hesitate-just ask for help.

Dads and bonding

A fathers’ presence is important in the role of caring and loving for a newborn baby. As with mothers, bonding can happen immediately or it can grow over time. Encourage your partner to take part in the day-to-day care of your baby. For example, bath time could be his special time to share with your baby. If he feels uncertain how to care for your baby show him gently how to change a diaper, how to hold and cuddle your baby, and how to dress and undress your baby. When a parent feels confident about caring for their baby, they are better able to bond with them. If you are the main caregiver, you are getting more practice at it and you need to share your knowledge and skills with him. If you are bottle-feeding then your partner can take turns at feeding the baby. If you are breastfeeding, he can take a role in the feeding experience by burping your baby afterward. He can bring the baby to you, change her diaper and get her back to sleep in the middle of the night. That way you are working together as a team and giving him plenty of time to bond with your baby. Bonding needs planning and work to take place.

So build time into your daily lives where dad has special time caring and being with your baby. Praise him and encourage him so his confidence levels are increasing. Plan some times when you leave your partner and baby at home together while you go out and take a break. This way they will really get to know each other with some uninterrupted quality time together.

By Nicole Rawson-Huff

Comments

My husband and I were lucky to secure a double room in the hospital after I gave birth. We virtually locked out the rest of the world, asking visitors to wait until we were home to meet our new family member. We spent four glorious days watching, cuddling and getting to know our beautiful new baby before having to return to the realities of life outside those walls. We still reflect fondly on this stolen time of joyous, loving and peaceful moments. I am sure this helped both of us bond with our baby.

I also chose to place my newborn on the breast moments after birth. Although I had no idea how to breastfeed at that stage, it felt nurturing for us both. The midwife actually left and found us a lactation nurse to assist the baby to latch on-but whether we did it correctly or not was not the aim at the time -it was to assist bonding and to offer our baby some comfort after her birthing experience.

Bonding....interesting...I know there is a lot of pressure and 'mother guilt' attached to this topic. I think people need to understand that it is different for every person and every baby and to just chill out and let it happen. Time needs to be afforded to the parents for this to happen, so alone time with no pressure and lots of skin on skin contact needs to occur. This is where grandparents can help by taking care of other things during this bonding time.

Before I share my experience I would like to stress that bonding is about perception. It is something different to each individual. To me the bonding experience keeps growing and evolving, with both intense and mundane moments.

I recollect I was surprised I 'bonded' with my daughter considering I wasn't able to have contact with her after the cesarean for about four hours. I also had breastfeeding issues for the first week. One of the moments I felt the bonding sensation was when she would contently sleep on my chest like a little warm slug with her head turned to the side and the most peaceful angelic look on her face.

I would have to say that the whole first time mother bit was fairly soul destroying for me. I felt that I should have been elated about having such a beautiful baby and that everything would feel natural. Well, that was so far from reality and with my hormones running wild in my body I'm surprised that I went on to have another three more children. I loved her very much but the instant bonding wasn't so instant because my physical and emotional body was taking a while to catch up to the page I was on. A very supportive husband and a keen sense of humor helped to put things in perspective.

At no time during all of this did anyone ever say that it was quite okay to feel this way and that many, many women do. Instead I was riddled with guilt at not feeling that this experience was wonderful. I know that many people do have a positive experience, which is fabulous, but I needed to know that I wasn't the sole exception to this elation.

What I remember most about my first child being born was the bond I developed with her almost instantly and how that was very different with my second child. Georgia my daughter was born about 9pm after about nine hours of labor. She was healthy and “happy”.
After her birth, my wife Louise went into emergency surgery. I remember taking Georgia as the nurse handed her to me thinking “Oh my god, what am I going to do now”? For the next three hours, Georgia and I paced the halls of the hospital. We were alone except for an occasional check in by a nurse.
I talked to Georgia and told her about her mother and me, her grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends. All the people who she would start to meet the next day during visiting hours. She slept in my arms and we began to bond.
Louise’s surgery went well and we all went home three days later. However, Louise got the flu a couple of days after being home and that combined with a all the other trauma her had body received meant that breastfeeding became very difficult and eventually Georgia was only on formula. While this was very hard for Louise it actually allowed Georgia and I to bond even more. I was really 50% of the feeding team and I enjoyed this special time with her.
Fast-forward three years. My son Joel was born and Louise had no problem breastfeeding. Even though I was there and held Joel a lot-we did not connect. I think it was not till Joel was about eight months old that we starting bonding. This was very hard for me. I missed the bond I had developed with Georgia.