7 Tips for Better Bonding with Baby
The relationship with your child begins as soon as they come into this world. Let your newborn know they are loved right away with these simple tips to get bonding with baby off to a loving start.
1. Delay routine procedures
Oftentimes the attending nurse does routine procedures—giving the vitamin K shot and putting eye ointment in baby’s eyes—immediately after birth and then presents the newborn to mother for bonding with baby. Ask the nurse to delay these procedures for an hour or so, allowing the family to enjoy this initial bonding period. The eye ointment temporarily blurs baby’s vision or causes her eyes to stay closed. She needs a clear first impression of you, and you need to see those eyes.
2. Stay connected
Ask your birth attendant and nurses to put baby on your abdomen and chest immediately after birth, or after cutting the cord and suctioning your baby, unless a medical complication requires temporary separation.
3. Let your baby breastfeed right after birth
Most babies are content simply to lick the nipple; other have a strong desire to suck at the breast immediately after birth. This nipple stimulation releases the hormone oxytocin, which increases the contractions of your uterus and lessens postpartum bleeding . Early sucking also stimulates the release of prolactin, the hormone that helps your mothering abilities click in right from the start.
4. Room in with your baby
Of course, bonding with baby does not end at the delivery bed—it is just the beginning! Making visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, and sucking connection with your baby right after birth may make you feel that you don’t want to release this little person that you’ve labored so hard to bring into the world, into the nursery—and you don’t have to. Your wombmate can now become your roommate. We advise healthy mothers and healthy babies to remain together throughout their hospital stay.
Who cares for your baby after delivery depends upon your health, your baby’s health, and your feelings. Some babies make a stable transition from the womb to the outside world without any complications; others need a few hours in the nursery for extra warmth, oxygen, suctioning, and other special attention until their vital systems stabilize.
Feelings after birth are as individual as feelings after lovemaking. Many mothers show the immediate glow of motherhood and the “birth high” excitement of a race finished and won. It’s love at first sight, and they can’t wait to begin bonding with baby and begin mothering within a millisecond after birth.
Others are relieved that the mammoth task of birth is over and that baby is normal. Now they are more interested in sleeping and recovering than bonding with baby and mothering. As one mother said following a lengthy and arduous labor, “Let me sleep for a few hours, take a shower, comb my hair, and then I’ll start mothering.” If these are your feelings, enjoy your rest—you’ve earned it. There is no need to succumb to pressure bonding with baby when neither your body nor mind is willing or able. In this case, father can enjoy bonding with baby while mother rests. The important thing is somebody is bonding with baby during this sensitive period of one to two hours of quiet alertness after birth. One of the saddest sights we see is a newly-born, one-hour-old baby parked all alone in the nursery, busily bonding (with wide-open, hungry eyes) with plastic sides of her bassinet. Give your baby a significant presence—mother, father, or even grandma in a pinch.
5. Touch your baby
Besides enjoying the stimulation your baby receives from the skin-to-skin contact of tummy-to-tummy and cheek-to-breast, gently stroke your baby, caressing his whole body. We have noticed that mothers and fathers often caress their babies differently. A new mother usually strokes her baby’s entire body with a gentle caress of her fingertips; the father, however, often places an entire hand on his baby’s head, as if symbolizing his commitment to protect the life he has fathered. Besides being enjoyable, stroking the skin is medically beneficial to the newborn. The skin, the largest organ in the human body, is very rich with nerve endings. At the time when baby is making the transition to air breathing, and the initial breathing patterns are very irregular, stroking stimulates the newborn to breathe more rhythmically—the therapeutic value of a parent’s touch.
6. Gaze at your newborn
Your newborn can see you best with an eye-to-eye distance of eight to ten inches (twenty to twenty-five centimeters)— amazingly, about the usual nipple-to-eye distance during breastfeeding. Place your baby in the face-to-face position, adjusting your head and your baby’s head in the same position so that your eyes meet. Enjoy this visual connection during the brief period of quiet alertness after birth, before baby falls into a deep sleep. Staring into your baby’s eyes may trigger a rush of beautiful mothering feelings.
7. Talk to your newborn
During the first hours and days after birth, a natural baby-talk dialogue will develop between mother and infant. Voice analysis studies have shown a unique rhythm and comforting cadence to mother’s voice.