5
The First Hello
Why the first moments after birth are so important
Up until recently psychologists and paediatricians thought that newborn babies were pretty much out of touch with the outside world and preoccupied with themselves. The mind of the newborn, if there was one at all, was nothing more than a confused and meaningless jumble of sensations that would never be remembered. What a newborn child experienced was not seen to matter much more than what happens to a house plant.
Boy, were they wrong.
With the help of methodical, scientific observation, we seem to have discovered what so many mothers and fathers have been saying all along: infants tune in to their environment and are very sensitive and watchful from the moment they emerge through the birth canal. For the first hour or so immediately following birth, the mother and the baby are under the effect of a powerful and natural hormonal infusion that makes them both super-alert; their senses are highly focused, their hearts open. What is Nature’s reason for priming mother and child for their first encounter in this way?
As soon as your new baby opens her eyes, she will be looking to connect with you, her parents. You might be astonished by your baby’s ability to look deeply into your eyes, and within moments to know you and be able to tell you apart from strangers. Unless emergency procedures at birth have disturbed your newborn’s wakeful alertness, you might also be blown away by the intelligent awareness you will perceive in her eyes. Just minutes after being born, babies can pick out, from a group of photos, a photo of their mother. She is the one they prefer to gaze at.
Carefully controlled experiments have shown that a breastfed baby can recognise – and prefer – his own mother’s odour at 3 days of age. When placed lying down between two used breast-pads, one of the mother’s and one of another woman, 3-day-old infants keep turning their heads towards the mother’s pad, even when the experimenters keep swapping the sides where the pads are placed. When he is helped to latch on to the mother’s breast within the first hour after birth, his mouth quickly learns the contours of her nipples and begins quickly to adapt to their unique sizes and shapes.
Every one of your baby’s senses are switched on at birth, ready to be permanently imprinted by the look of you, the smell of you, the feel of you and the taste of you. And, as we saw in the last chapter, the sound of you is already recorded in your baby’s mind before birth. Every part of the journey so far has been carefully orchestrated by Nature so that you, the mother, become indelibly imprinted into your baby’s mind and heart through each of his five senses. This is the original act of falling in love, and to the baby, you are The One. The hormones that produce intense alertness recede to normal levels after an hour or so, when, if everything goes well, newborns tend to slide into a deep and restful slumber. Having worked hard and found his beloved, he can sleep peacefully. The most supercharged window of opportunity for primal bonding is gently closed.
There is a purpose behind this plan that has been honed through millions of years of evolution. The first and all-important goal of the baby is attachment, and he is born eager to cement this lifelong attachment from the very beginning. The quality and intimacy of a baby’s attachment to his mother and father is at the very centre of his wellbeing. The first layer of your child’s emotional intelligence is about emotional security: the ability to trust that no matter what happens, a loving person is always on hand ready to hold him and comfort him, that he will never be abandoned. Healthy attachment is what gives a baby his emotional security. Attachment is the main imperative of this first stage of life, for it has consequences – both physical and emotional – that last a lifetime. The trusting and affectionate mother–child attachment is the prototype of all human relationships, and it gets its head-start at this first embrace.
Your child’s emotional intelligence, and her way of relating to others as she grows up, is highly dependent on the strength of this primary attachment. Most mothers find these moments unutterably beautiful, a joyous first meeting they will never forget.
The earliest days when attachment is forged have a remarkable impact on the child’s nervous system and brain chemistry. The child’s biology reflects his attachment history like notes in a diary, and the neurological changes that take place at this critical time are manifested in his personality. His emotional memory of how he was ushered into the world lives on in his body and in his unconscious mind, shaping his attitudes and behaviour and colouring his emotionality. For all of us, some of our deepest hopes, loves and fears have their roots in the primal stages of our lives.
As the medical profession comes to accept how utterly important the first moments of bonding are, thousands of maternity hospitals around the world are scrambling to reform their practice to ensure that mothers and their newborns remain together at all times. This new practice is called ‘rooming-in’. Before you choose a maternity hospital, ask them if they have updated to incorporate this policy. Everything about a newborn – her abject vulnerability and dependence, the genetically programmed distress call the moment she is separated – is geared to remaining in contact with her mother, and to a lesser extent with her father, at all times after birth. The classic image of rows of newborns, interred all alone in plastic cribs and being viewed through a window-pane, screaming, deprived of human touch – is one of unimaginable despair and bereavement for a baby. The pace of change is such that this method will soon be a thing of the past.
BREAKING THE BOND
Many of the world’s cultures have ritually disrupted postnatal bonding, denying newborn babies the vital opportunity to bond with their mothers when their consciousness is most open, and denying them colostrum, the first and most highly nutritious milk, now understood to be essential for a healthy immune system. This widespread denial of primal bonding has interfered with a most potent means of imbuing the child’s brain with peaceful and loving impulses. Could it be that this is one (of many) means to create a population that is more willing to fight? The Spartans, who were among the most warlike of early civilisations, used to drop newborns on the ground. Survivors were expected to become good warriors. The early disruptions to the mother–child connection have been always thought to produce more war-capable societies.
Kangaroo care
These days more and more hospital staff around the world are encouraging mothers to keep their newborns right next to them with direct skin-to-skin contact, for as much of the time as they can. We call this ‘kangaroo care’, since it reminds us of the luxuries enjoyed by baby kangaroos (joeys) inside their mother’s pouch. The benefits of kangaroo care can be dramatic and long-lasting. Skin-to-skin contact babies tend to cry less and sleep more than those wrapped and placed in cots, and they smile more. Since newborn babies are not equipped to handle separation, doesn’t it make sense that they would fare much better when closely held?
The benefits do not stop there. Lying in contact with her mother helps the baby to regulate her own body temperature, metabolic rate, hormone and enzyme levels, heart rate and breathing. Her whole body is downloading its vital rhythms through the mother’s skin. Some studies show that infants who are handled more gain weight faster and develop muscle coordination sooner. Even premature babies who are touched regularly each day gain weight much faster and show fewer neurological problems later. Touch is just as important as food. Another study found that at two years, and again at five years, kangaroo care children had higher IQs, better vocabulary and better comprehension. Literacy starts early. It is a wonder that we ever allowed infants to spend hours all alone in cribs. As I will continue to show you, a surprising number of customary practices throughout history have been damaging for children’s emotional health. Thankfully, parenting practices are continually being upgraded, mostly for the betterment of our children.
Rarely does the baby gain without there being a pay-off for the mother too. Direct skin-to-skin contact in the early moments and days switches on the mother’s intuition and helps her to learn the baby’s communication style and rhythms. This investment goes a long way towards helping mothers to respond more appropriately to their babies’ cries, and so to soothe them sooner. The benefits last: one study found that, two years after the birth, kangaroo care mothers were more responsive and spoke more soothingly to their babies. Closeness and touch can also help the baby to synchronise his sleep cycles to his mother’s – the advantages need no explanation for any parent who has felt the sting of sleep deprivation.
Kangaroo care and rooming-in will give your child a base of emotional security that lasts a lifetime. But when you and your baby are separated after birth, as was done in hospitals around the world for decades, it is not always easy to repair the child’s damaged trust.
A revolution in primal healthcare
Breastfeeding is one of the best insurance policies to protect the baby’s physical and emotional health for life (see chapter 7). So, another major reason why newborns should remain with their mothers is to establish a strong and healthy breastfeeding pattern. If mothers are to breastfeed successfully, it is very important to allow the baby to latch on quite soon after birth (within the hour), to keep the mother and baby close together, to provide all the professional support necessary and to keep infant formulas and pacifiers well away.
The WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been deeply concerned about the crucial need to improve bonding and breastfeeding rates everywhere; they see this as an urgent public health issue. To this end, they joined forces to promote the Baby-Friendly Hospitals Initiative (BFHI). This is a global initiative to restore breastfeeding and early attachment by accrediting maternity hospitals that formally agree to ten pro-breastfeeding steps.
The ten-step Baby-Friendly Hospitals Initiative
Some of the ten steps that accredited hospitals have to agree to include:
mother and newborn to be kept together 24 hours a day
breastfeeding to be initiated within half an hour of the birth
substitutes, such as baby formula and pacifiers, to be kept away from newborns and their mothers unless medically indicated.
So far this scheme has been a huge success. In 2002, there were around 15 000 baby-friendly hospitals worldwide. In 2006, there were fifty-eight in Australia (only two in New South Wales), only fifty-five in the USA and around fifty in the UK. Meanwhile, 100 per cent of hospitals in Malaysia, Sweden and Iran are certified as baby-friendly. In Sweden, where all maternity centres have been baby-friendly since 1997, the breastfeeding rate at 6 months has increased nationally from about 50 per cent to 73 per cent. The number of BFHI hospitals is growing rapidly, and will continue to make an enormously positive difference to public health and wellbeing.
If you are thinking of delivering your baby in a hospital, ask if it is BFHI certified.
Preparing your newborn to be a sound sleeper
By keeping your newborn close to you throughout the day and sleeping close together – close enough so your baby can hear you breathing – your infant learns the difference between night and day, and starts to adapt to your sleep–wake rhythms early. Newborns who room-in with their mothers in hospital learn this faster than those sent to a crib (see chapter 7 for the pros and cons of co-sleeping).
Talk to your newborns – they talk back
If you want to connect with your new baby, watch closely and stay open to surprises. You will see that she looks at you, if only briefly, and says all kinds of things through her changing facial expressions – sometimes in response to yours. Don’t push, expect too much or try to make it happen. Just let yourself be natural, allowing whatever facial expressions come to you spontaneously.
BABY SEES MORE
Until recently paediatricians thought that all that babies could see was light. Newborns can, in fact, identify their mother’s face, can gaze at her and at times imitate her expressions. Infants can visually track objects, and prefer to look at faces or face-like diagrams. Newborns are less likely to respond in this way if they are under the influence of drugs used in labour or exhausted from a long and complicated delivery.
To connect with your infant:
Try talking with him when he is fully awake and not preoccupied with hunger or tiredness (this is called the ‘quiet alert state’).
In the first few weeks, the baby’s attention is more likely to be quite fleeting; don’t expect a sustained conversation.
Use simple words, wordless sounds, simple expressions, such as sticking out your tongue or making an O, be creative and playful. Be sure to be gentle, not hyped up and don’t try to rev up your baby.
Repeat things a few times and wait; give him space to take it in – it is possible he might even mimic or reply in some way.
The eyes are the windows of the soul. Even when there is not much going on in terms of expression, just notice who you see in your baby’s eyes when he gazes back at you, however briefly. His infinite, quiet curiosity, his perfect innocence and lack of judgement. Infants don’t perceive, they simply see. They have very little ability to interpret, so their minds are pure. If you catch him in a moment when he is calm and alert, you will see boundless wisdom and peace in his eyes. There is so much that passes between you in just moments of unadorned eye contact.
Be sensitive to your baby’s signal that he has had enough, so he is not over-stimulated. He will, for instance, turn his eyes away, or his facial expression will show some discomfort. Let him rest and have his space. Under 2 months the attention span is quite brief, and you would not want to over-stimulate him by demanding more.
If you do this a few times every day, and remain quietly watchful, making this your special, tender and intimate time together, you will find you will learn your infant’s language, and you will feel so much closer to each other. These conversations are the precursor to literacy. The more your baby feels that his attempts to communicate are met, the more he feels rewarded for reaching out. This prepares a strong foundation for him to be a good communicator.
Psychologists call this dialogue with your infant ‘healthy mirroring’, and it is the main thing that helps the baby to establish a sense of self. More than anything, babies need to feel that someone out there is seeing them, hearing them and caring enough for them to respond to their attempts to communicate. They learn about who they are – their ‘me’ – through the way they are looked at, spoken to, responded to. These earliest memories will be recorded in the baby’s brain for life, quietly telling him: ‘I am loved, I am lovable, I am wanted, I am worth listening to, I am worthy of others’ attention …’ In no uncertain terms, this is the foundation of a strong self-esteem, the core attitude that enables an individual to create and maintain loving relationships for the rest of his life.
All aspects of emotional intelligence spring from these earliest impressions of human connection. When we give our babies this kind of attention from the beginning, it is the greatest gift. Our time, our loving attention and responsiveness make a universe of difference. Quite literally, this early connection transforms the baby’s brain and, in so doing, transforms the baby’s future.
Take the time to be self-aware when you are connecting with your infant. Breathe gently and relax, notice what happens around your heart, notice how you feel. If you allow yourself to feel, you will find that without words or big gestures your infant has touched you, he has moved you deeply. Your wordless conversations build a most mysterious and rich connection between you. Trust this process, it will help to create a more harmonious relationship between you and your child, for years to come. It adds layers of bedrock to the love that moves between you.
As babies look out into the world, sometimes they simply explore the landscape, discover and learn about their environment. But often what they look for is connection, someone that sees them and cares for them – they look for mirroring. If an infant’s reaching out is not met, she feels a huge sense of loss and begins to feel uncertain, insecure. Her fast-growing brain records the sense that relationships are unreliable. Later on, her emotionality and her behaviour will reflect this. She may, for instance, develop more clingy behaviour in order to catch up on extra attention or, alternatively, she might become resigned, quiet and withdrawn in order to defend herself from disappointment. In the baby stage of our child’s life, nothing could be more important than encouraging their communication by responding to them, promptly, tenderly and consistently.
It often catches parents by surprise to discover that their infant, even their newborn, can actually respond to them. Many parents tend to invest little energy on interacting with their babies until several weeks after the birth, when they can get a big, sustained smile out of them, and some giggles. The infant has all his basic bodily functions attended to but tragically is not related to as a person until he can produce the kind of obvious gestures that his parents can recognise. It is sad that many infants are treated as yet-to-be-inhabited bodies. Simply servicing an infant’s bodily needs without actually connecting with him is probably not very rewarding for the parent either. That’s why it is so important to add this dimension of connection to your relationship. This is how you really get a feel for the person in your baby. Meanwhile, your baby will feel rewarded for communicating, encouraged to reach out to you, to trust. To connect so intimately with your baby promises to bring you both untold wonders and delights.
Mother’s and father’s intuition
Long before they can form their first words, babies have a rich vocabulary with which they communicate. From the beginning, their many facial expressions, body postures and gestures, their cries and their little noises are speaking volumes about their feelings and needs. And yet, as parents we all struggle to understand them from time to time.
Over time, we come to decipher what they are saying to us, we gradually become familiarised with their different expressions, though quite a bit of trial and error is involved. Parents’ intuition is not always spontaneous; it is developed, sometimes painstakingly, with time. Intuition is not magic. It is no more than learning your baby’s language and it comes to you from your willingness to be quietly watchful and fascinated with your child.
Intuition comes from connection, and connection with our own feelings is the first ingredient. If we listen to our own feelings, this helps us to access our body-memory of childhood, bringing us empathically closer to our child.
Secondly, the flood of natural hormones generated at birth and afterwards – the hormones of connection – is designed to help both parents to attune to their baby. That’s why an unfailing raft of support and a natural birth with the father present – conditions that favour the greatest flow of these hormones – can make such a dramatic difference to the quality of the parent–child connection, with lifetime benefits to the child’s emotional intelligence.
Thirdly, there is no substitute for closeness. For both parents, their intuitive ability to ‘understand’ their baby’s communication is honed by spending their hours close together, learning each other’s patterns, personal tastes and changing moods. The modern trend for putting babies in daycare makes it very difficult for mothers to develop the intuition and attunement that they are inherently capable of.
How newborns communicate
It was only until two to three decades ago that medical authorities and psychologists still assumed that infants’ cries were random and meaningless, just some kind of rehearsal. Now it is clear that their cries are varied, that they have a rich vocabulary loaded with meaning and that their facial expressions and body language are full of meaning too. By spending time together and being observant mothers and fathers soon learn the many meanings of their baby’s different cries. There seems to be no alternative but to experiment with different responses, to be watchful for the baby’s reactions and learn from our mistakes (‘Are you hungry?’ ‘Do you need your nappy changed?’ ‘Are you cold?’ ‘Are you bored?’ ‘Do you just want to be held?’). Babies don’t hold back. They let us know loud and clear – if they are healthy, that is – when what we are giving them is not what they want. The main thing is not necessarily to get it right first go, or all the time. If this is what you expect from yourself as a parent, you will place enormous pressure on yourself and all the joy and pleasure of parenting will disappear. The main thing is that you are there with your baby, offering your interest and care, gently trying different things, offering a range of goodies to see which one was the one she was asking you for. Yes, sometimes it can be a guessing game, and every parent feels confused and helpless sometimes.
Even if from time to time you find that no matter what you do, your baby keeps crying – and you are sure that she is not injured or ill – there is plenty of reason to remain calm. If you understand that the most important thing for a baby is to not be alone, your caring presence helps her to deal with her feelings. Remember: connection is the key. Stay with her, hold her, rock her a little and talk with her. Let her know how you feel about not being able to console her. Your voice carries your emotion, and this really makes a difference for her, even if you can’t see it.
Over time you will learn your baby’s broad vocabulary. If you pay attention and trust yourself to experiment, you will learn to distinguish her cries of boredom from her cries of frustration, when she is cold or physically uncomfortable, her protest when she feels bothered or invaded (‘I don’t like the way you change my nappy’), when she feels sad or lonely and wants to be held, her cries of fear or of colicky tummy pain, her sounds of hunger, or her grizzles of tiredness. Sometimes she just needs to cry for a while as you hold her in order to release any accumulated stress from the day. The more time you spend together, without rushing yourself or putting pressure on yourself to be a perfect interpreter of your baby’s language, the more naturally and easily you will come to understand each other and synchronise your daily rhythms.
Infants don’t only want their cries responded to. They want you to see their quiet peacefulness, their joy, their pleasure, their awe and fascination with this wonderful new world they are discovering. Sometimes, they just want to talk, to exchange little noises with you that say little more than ‘Hello, I am here’. Though their attention span is limited and they tire of interaction sooner than older babies, they often look for your eyes and thrive on your attention, your responsiveness to all their feelings. When they see that their joy touches you and is reflected in your eyes, it multiplies their joy. This mirroring is what helps them to grow into joyous children and adults. Your responsiveness is what ensures for your baby a lifetime of contentment and emotional health.
Do newborns get stressed?
You might be wondering: Stress? What stress? Why might infants feel stressed?
Anyone who has had a glimpse of their own memories of babyhood needs no explanation here. They can recapture the joys and the stresses they felt in their tiny bodies as infants. But for most people these memories remain covered, so it is worth reminding ourselves what can stress a baby.
Getting born can be stressful, scary and exhausting for babies.
Babies’ brains are not able to compute object constancy, which means that when they see you walk away, they are unable to imagine you coming back. When you are gone, you are gone, and this can frighten them.
Babies don’t have the ability as we do to suppress emotion or sensation. Whatever they feel, they feel to full intensity, which means that hunger, or the longing to be picked up and held, are powerful sensations that travel through the baby’s entire body.
Waiting is unbearable. Babies cannot understand time at all.
Nappy changes can be invasive; babies tend to hate being fiddled with and cannot possibly understand why they are being messed around with.
Stress is all about losing control and babies are entirely helpless. Their every sensation, satisfaction and comfort are wholly dependent on the goodwill of others. Imagine yourself in that position for a few minutes. Would you not find this stressful?
There is another side to this. Babies are just as defenceless in the face of joy and pleasure. When they are held, connected to, massaged and generally when their needs are met; they can be overcome with joy, suffused with bliss, or transported into the deepest states of peace. Watch a baby who is fulfilled at the breast and you might see the bliss in her eyes. By the way, if you ever experienced this as a baby, your baby’s bliss might trigger your own body-memories and help you to tap in to your own bliss.
Can newborn babies smile?
How many times have you heard: ‘The baby is not smiling, she has gas’, or, ‘Babies can’t smile until they are 6 weeks old’?
It has always seemed strange to me that infants are talked about as if their feelings were not real. It seems odd that an infant can show exactly the same expression as a smiling adult, using the same facial muscles, but somehow on an adult the smile says, ‘I am happy’, while on an infant the very same smile says ‘Hey, it’s not that I’m happy, I’m just trying to fart!’ If every time a friend greets you they said, ‘Is that flatulence, or are you just glad to see me?’, you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit miffed.
It seems all the more strange that people should deny the feelings that underlie an infant smile when the neural networks that support emotion are already developed and perfectly able to produce all kinds of emotion by the sixth month inside the womb.
On our noticeboard at home there is a photo of our daughter when she was just a few hours old. She was sleeping peacefully; her slight Mona Lisa-like smile showed a deeply pleasurable and fulfilled state.
Guess what? With the aid of ultrasound imagery, babies have been seen to smile inside the womb. We all need to get over the denial: this is not a practice smile; it is the real thing. To say that a foetus does not feel pleasure has no basis in neurological fact. If a foetus can feel and react to pain (which they can at 12 weeks of gestation), then they can feel pleasure.
Here is the good news: the human body is, right from the start, capable of delicious states of pleasure; our nervous system is capable of deeply fulfilling states of bliss from the earliest moments of consciousness inside the womb. When babies feels cherished, nourished and comfortable, no wonder they smile. Don’t you smile when you feel that way?
Meticulous studies of brain activity and facial movements show that infants smile more enthusiastically at their mothers than at anyone else. They know who you are and are hooked on you right from the start.
So, that’s what was going on for our newly born daughter when the photo was taken: she was blissfully smiling, a smile of deep restfulness and satisfaction. It is pleasurable to be in a body, to breathe air, to be able to expand beyond the confines of the womb and to be in the arms of loving parents.
And the goodies just keep coming: the brain chemicals associated with pleasure actually nourish the baby’s brain. Pleasure, love and joy cause new neural pathways to grow in the parts of the brain that regulate emotion. A baby’s joy builds the neurobiology of emotional intelligence; it contributes to a lifetime of emotional health.
What else can newborns do?
From the first day a healthy baby can imitate some of your facial expressions just a little bit. If you slowly stick out your tongue, for example, and wait patiently a few moments, you might find that he does the same back.
Newborns learn to recognise faces very quickly. They have been observed turning to look for the mother when the father is holding them. Moments after birth, if allowed to, a newborn can instinctively drag himself up to his mother’s chest, find her nipple and self-attach. The reason why these abilities have not been generally recognised is that they can be disorganised or reduced if drugs have been used in labour.
The more we can tune in to this reality of our babies’ emotional inner world, the more fulfilling parenting can be, and the more our babies feel connected to us.
To circumcise or not?
It stands to reason that the human body does not invest its energies to build a body part that has no use and in fact is likely to cause disease. It was once thought that the appendix and the tonsils, for instance, were useless and problematic bits of flesh. Now we know that both perform an important role as part of the immune system. The same is true for the foreskin; it has an important purpose. For tens of millions of years, all male mammals have had a foreskin. If it was useless and it posed health risks, why has it not naturally evolved away? Why did it evolve in the first place?
So, why do we continue to circumcise baby boys? Until the 1970s doctors assumed that routine infant circumcision was harmless, painless and that it protected the boy from many diseases. Today, no national medical organisation in the world recommends routine circumcision of male infants. Medical authorities around the English-speaking world have all spoken against it (see References).
There is some inconclusive evidence that infant circumcision lowers the risk of urinary tract infections, but that is not enough to justify the amputation of healthy tissue as a pre-emptive strike, especially as breast-feeding and cleanliness offer adequate protection from this disease. We don’t take out the appendix at birth in order to prevent peritonitis, or the tonsils to prevent tonsillitis. Since circumcision also poses risks of medical complications, the possible benefits don’t seem to outweigh the damage done to the penis. The foreskin is also meant to protect the head of the penis from infection or irritation, particularly in childhood. In almost every case, circumcision is a needless mutilation of the penis.
The foreskin contains an especially high concentration of nerve endings responsible for pleasurable sensation. With one of the highest concentrations of nerve endings in the body, it is the most sensitive part of the penis. It is there for a purpose, and its loss diminishes sexual sensation considerably. The head of the circumcised penis grows an extra layer of skin in order to cope with the unnatural exposure. This reduces its sensitivity further. To be sure, circumcised men are still able to enjoy heights of sexual pleasure. But new understandings about the role of the foreskin suggest that, with an intact penis, this pleasure is more profound and more sustained.
Babies feel pain more acutely than we do, but until recently this was not understood and babies were circumcised without analgesics. To an infant, wouldn’t this feel like torture? Is it possible to think of circumcision other than as traumatic? Infants’ heart rates go up during the procedure, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol also increase. What a way to welcome a child into the world. Since babies are so emotionally fragile, we should be pausing to think of the possible long-term emotional effects. It is also worth asking whether circumcision might be part of what troubles babies who seem particularly ‘fussy’ or cry persistently, a kind of infantile post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Accordingly, circumcision is disappearing. Circumcision rates peaked in Australia at around 90 per cent in the 1950s, and have dropped to a little over 10 per cent now. At the time of writing, public hospitals no longer provide circumcision for non-medical reasons in Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Tasmania. In the USA, over 50 per cent of boys are circumcised, and the USA is the only country in the world where most circumcisions are done for non-religious reasons. New Zealand also had high rates at over 90 per cent in the 1950s, but almost no one circumcises there today. Just over 3 per cent are circumcised in the UK.
CIRCUMCISION AS RITUAL
Ritual mutilation of the penis has been widespread among many traditional cultures in Africa, Australia, New Guinea, Peru, Polynesia, ancient Greece, and among Arabs and Jews. Since the Jewish religion permits progressive questioning and debate, this has made room for a new and growing rabbinical perspective that favours an alternative ritual, sometimes referred to as a naming ceremony or bris shalom. It has all the joy of the traditional ritual without the pain and damage of circumcision (see References).
Although the justifications given for non-religious circumcision changed over time, it first became immensely popular in the USA, the UK and around Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the belief (and fervent hope) that it would inhibit masturbation. Doctors commonly held the bizarre belief that masturbation would lead to a host of diseases, such as epilepsy, spinal tuberculosis and sterility.
The gift of what your infant can teach you
Feelings are contagious. If you let yourself be still, open and watchful around your new baby, you might find that his simple, utterly non-judgemental attention, his Buddha-like calm and disarming innocence, will transport you into a similar state of mind. Your time with your baby can give you access to states of consciousness that many people spend years meditating, praying, doing yoga or other practices in order to reach. Once you have found these moments of fathomless peace, your nervous system is more likely to remember the pathway to it. In our hustle and bustle we forget how to access this natural state: babies can remind us – if we let them. Spend quiet time together, often, and you’ll find you are nourished by this experience as much as your baby is nourished by you. A baby’s uncluttered and untroubled mind can teach you that simply being present, here and now, can be a delicious experience.
The psychology of bliss
We all look for contentment and happiness. Since this is, tragically, a rare state of affairs in our world, we give thanks for passing moments of happiness and basic contentment. But the human body has evolved to be capable of far more. Our nervous systems and hormonal networks are innately capable of producing far more intense levels of joy, even if only as peak experiences. We have been designed to follow our bliss, and this seems to have something to do with honest self-expression and loving relationships.
In light of these recent understandings about the brain we need to update our definitions of what it means to be emotionally healthy. The capacity for natural states of bliss, deep calm and profound love is the unacknowledged cornerstone of emotional health and part of everybody’s potential. That doesn’t mean that we should all be able to be blissed out all day long – life causes us to feel myriad emotions and some of these are painful. But much has been learnt about how a number of key childhood experiences can train our brains to have more access to these wonderful feelings throughout our lives. Science has drawn for us a map for how we can become more peaceful and more loving as individuals and as societies.
Loving connections at the dawn of life give us our resilience and our ability to love – and this is what keeps us going through our hard times. If for one reason or another these opportunities for the healthiest start are missed at the perinatal stage of parenting, then it becomes all the more important to take advantage of the many later opportunities for loving connection – as you will see in later chapters.
Mum and Dad, take care of each other
Just as your baby has special emotional needs at the start of her life journey, you the parents are likely to discover some new needs of your own. Don’t be too surprised if you both feel unusually open and emotionally sensitive. I have heard a number of parents say that, for a few months after the birth of their child, they could not watch the news on television. You might feel as if your emotions are turned up – you’ll feel teary, more prone to irritability, more tender and affectionate, and certainly more protective. You might also be unusually happy, and might find yourself smiling and laughing more. This process is both natural and helpful, so respect and honour it.
To some extent, what you might be experiencing are fleeting glimmers of your emotional memories of babyhood, evoked through your connection with your child. This is also a natural part of your transformation as a parent; your added sensitivity helps you to be better attuned to your baby’s needs.
Your honeymoon with your new family is a precious time of bonding and getting to know each other, and it should be preserved as sacred. If you feel the need to be private, honour that. Don’t allow your visitors to overstay their welcome; your needs come first right now. Hang out together, chat, talk to each other about your experiences as new parents, hold each other and be tender. Don’t come out of your cocoon until you are ready. The first few days or weeks are precious and you should have them together, uncluttered by obligations. These moments will enrich your family life and give you sweet memories, and your baby will benefit immensely.
What friends and family should do for new parents
There are so many wonderful things that a community can offer new parents. Taking care of a new family in our midst can be as special a gift for the giver as it is for the receivers. We can cook a meal for them, shop for them, we can offer all kinds of practical support that will allow them precious time to rest, and get to know their new baby. We should not exhort them to place their new baby on exhibit, and instead let the parents introduce us to their child in their own, good time. Certainly, some new parents are keener to socialise than others, but some can feel smothered by the flocks of well-meaning relatives bearing flowers and asking to take turns at holding the little infant. We are all drawn to give our blessing to the new baby of those we love – but we need to tread lightly and be sensitive to their space. Helping parents with a new baby can be a wonderful act of humility and love, and creates a deeply heartfelt feeling of community.
The long-term benefits of healthy bonding
Perinatal bonding is at the heart of our psychological health and wellbeing. It is the springboard to a closer, more harmonious parent–child relationship. This is the child’s very first impression of what the world holds for him. The more the infant’s primal emotional needs are met, the more readily he will be soothed and comforted as a baby and child. The baby thus begins his life with these attitudes: I am welcome, I am wanted, I belong here, I am a part of the people and the world around me. This pervasive sense of belonging and of being wanted helps the baby grow into a loving, confident and assertive individual.
Wounded by an inadequate early connection, some people spend their lives looking for a place to belong; they find it hard to maintain lasting and loving relationships. It cannot be stressed enough how important these first moments of life are. We should do everything possible to protect this foundational parent–child connection.