Parenting a Baby: Doing What Comes Naturally
You have a new baby, and you’re a little overwhelmed by it all. She is so helpless and so dependent on you but you don’t know if you’re up to the job. It’s such a big important job, and you are unprepared for it, so you don’t know how to go about parenting a baby.
Over the next six months or so, your baby has two very important jobs. Her success in accomplishing will affect her for the rest of her life and her success depends on you.
Attachment
In the first few months of life, the baby bonds with her parents, especially Mom. This bonding is essential for her to successfully negotiate relationships later in life. People who don’t learn how to bond in these early months have a hard time learning it later. In adulthood they may be attachment avoidant or attachment anxious.
Attachment avoidant people have difficulty forming close relationships. They can’t let people in and are afraid of exposing themselves. They are afraid of getting hurt, so they push people away and avoid relationships.
Attachment anxious individuals also have trouble forming close relationships, but they are afraid of being rejected. Instead of pushing people away, they cling to them or manipulate them. Co-dependent people are often attachment anxious.
When you are parenting a baby, you help her bond with you. How do you do it? Hold her, nurse her, and look at her, babble to her. Pick her up and comfort her when she cries. For most people, parenting a baby like this is what comes naturally, but some mommies have to be intentional about it. Just use all your senses to connect with your baby as much as you can. Look at her, listen to her, smell her and touch her. Okay, you don’t have to taste her. Mommy time—and Daddy time—is what your baby needs from you in order to form secure attachments.
Trust
Along with attachment, babies learn to trust in the first few months. Think about it. Your baby was in a snug, warm environment where everything was provided for him, and then he was forced out of it into a bright, harsh, cold world and he suddenly experiences things like hunger and discomfort. Wouldn’t you feel a little distrustful, too?
Your baby learns to trust as you meet his needs. He gets hungry and cries and you feed him, and he learns to trust that the world is a good place and his needs will be met. His diaper is uncomfortable and he cries and you change him, and he learns a little more trust. These trust moments happen hundreds of times in the first few months, and you are parenting a baby when you meet his needs in most of these moments.
If, however, he is left to cry when he’s hungry or uncomfortable, he’ll learn that the world is a dangerous place and that he can’t trust anybody.
This, too, will affect him for the rest of his life. He must learn to trust in order to develop intimate relationships. He has to be able to trust to take risks or to learn new things.
Babies learn attachment and trust literally at their mother’s breast. Fortunately, they learn when you do what you do best: feed your baby and take care of him, love her and enjoy her. And you will do a great job. You’re a natural at parenting a baby. You’re a mommy.
