The Newborn is Prepared

With a brain only about one-fourth ready, babies land right smack in the middle of a chaotic and messy real world. The soothing things the growing fetus had in the womb—the peace to sleep, a controlled space for exploring her own movements, the comforting external movements of her mother, the familiar muffled sounds of the household—have been abruptly snatched away. Parents and caregivers help with the transition by paying close attention to comfort. But modern science tells us that, even though the world is confusing to newborns, they’ve got amazing devices with which to begin sorting it all out, right from the very start.

Despite the newborn’s extreme immaturity, he is well pre- pared. He has at his disposal an arsenal of tools for himself; and some he’ll find himself using in response to signals from mother, father, or caregivers.

Survival for an infant in the fourth trimester means being constantly close to a nurturing caregiver—to the soothing touch, sound, odor, and radiated warmth provided by some- one who loves and pays close attention. Newborns are naturally built and equipped by evolution to prefer their mothers, though adopted infants have proven that their allegiance changes when it must. That closeness is a vital part of the transition from womb to world. Human babies pick up on movement patterns,

breathing sounds, and body heat, all of which begin to regu- late hormonal releases—melatonin to help manage the sleep- wake cycle and body temperature, and cortisol to regulate blood pressure, blood sugar, and immune response.

 

The kinds of behaviors that come naturally to parents and caregivers around the world are just what the baby needs. Rub- bing and massaging her back, stomach, or legs keeps the infant warm; stimulates respiration, digestion, and elimination; and calms her down. Mothers naturally hold their babies most often on the left side of their bodies, and babies love feeling the sooth- ing heartbeat. Mothers, fathers, and almost all adults talk in high-pitched voices when they speak to babies, and they look their babies in the eye. They’ve been doing these things for millions of years—exactly the things that newborns crave.

 

Just as the colt is born ready to stand, a human baby is born ready to recognize another human face, the smell of her mother’s milk, and the familiar sound of her voice. It’s precisely because human babies are so extremely neurologically immature at birth that they are exquisitely responsive to the body cues of adults, even to the point of matching the rhythm of breathing when they rest on a person’s chest. Fetal life has prepared the newborn to recognize these cues from another loving body, and the familiarity helps to ease the transition of the fourth trimes- ter. Babies have been responding to those instinctive touches, smells, and sounds since the first human put one foot in front of the other.

“We are all preemies at birth, relative to other primates. The baby is highly sensitized to gases the mother gives off,” says Dr. James McKenna, anthropologist and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. “Every baby in the world—put them next to their mothers and they all do the same thing. They root. They breathe differently. The baby is waiting to respond to these kinds of things. They have come off a long evolutionary tree, and they know what to do.”

Evolution, biology, genetics, and the environment all help to fashion one special baby, far better than anything parents might have imagined. But the deep well of parental love won’t be returned in kind. Not yet. Babies need that love, can’t thrive without it; but at first, it’s all an infant can do to handle the new work of eating, breathing, and regulating her own heartbeat and digestion. She’s not yet ready to show any signs of returning the outpouring of love. It can seem like unrequited love, but the demands and frustrations of the first months do not represent a failure of parenting. It’s not personal. It’s simply biology. Parents have waited for a baby, and they’ve been handed a mysterious, not-fully-formed neonate. Patience. The baby’s brain, from the moment of birth, is beginning to mature, to figure out sleep- ing, seeing, hearing. It’s part of the dance of life—her cries, gri- maces, and involuntary smiles encouraging a parental response and paving the way for a two-way attachment.14 In time, she’ll begin to respond. And one day soon, she’ll smile, a reward making it all worthwhile.