Tiny humans aka babies are not just tiny adults. They are fully formed, incredible examples of intelligent design. They know what they need and they know how to tell you. So when it dawns on you that you are soon to be fully responsible for keeping one alive (and thriving), don’t panic! You’re actually not doing this alone and in fact, you don’t even need to be in charge of the process.
This may sound absurd, but let the baby lead. Babies come with different personalities and temperaments which is what primarily drives their needs. So trying to have set schedules, measuring bottles to the milliliter, and recording every poop and pee they’ve had in their entire lifetime is wholly unnecessary (disclaimer: if your infant has a specific medical condition, some of these things may be needed – consult your doctor). Now that we’ve covered what your baby doesn’t need, lets take a closer look at what they do need.
Constant Co-regulation
Human brains grow immensely in the first three years of life and aren’t fully matured until we’re in our 20s. This is why we see progress (aka maturity) in physical, cognitive, and social emotional skills across this period of time. During infancy, a babies stress response system is still developing. This development will occur no matter the situation BUT the environment that the baby is in significantly impacts how this development occurs. We can either be wiring our baby’s brains for safety and regulation or we can wire them for insecurity and dysregulation. In order to wire them for safety and regulation, we, as adults, need to co-regulate with the infant.
This means paying attention to them and their cues and responding in a supportive way. When a baby is trying to tell us something and we meet their need, they are learning that they can trust us, that they will be taken care of, that they don’t need to be on high alert. When a baby is trying to tell us something and we don’t meet their need (either intentionally or not), they are learning that they can’t trust us, they’re not certain that they will be taken care of, and they need to be on high alert to ensure their needs are met. Remember, babies don’t have the cognitive capacity to rationalize that they are in their house with their parents and there are no tigers coming to eat them and food will be available whenever they need it – they need us to prove that to them time and again so that they feel that safety in their body. It is through consistently and reliably meeting their needs that babies eventually (like after 3 years old) start to learn how to self-regulate.
Be Fed on Demand
While it may be more convenient for everything to work like clock-work – that’s just not how babies function, especially when it comes to eating. Sometimes they eat more, sometimes they eat less, sometimes they eat every 20 minutes, sometimes they don’t eat for 4 hours – that’s all normal. (Disclaimer: if you have concerns about your babies feeding or their weight gain consult your baby’s care provider). These needs and patterns change as baby’s need change. Sometimes they’re going through a growth spurt and want to feed frequently or sometimes they got a lot of milk during one feed and don’t need to eat again for a while. If we don’t try to intervene and just feed the baby whenever they tell us their hungry, they’ll grow and feeding will remain a positive activity. When we try to enforce strict schedules, we’ll end up trying to force feed our baby and it won’t be a positive experience. Remember, it doesn’t matter if your baby eats, plays, and sleeps, or eats, sleeps, and plays – those things are all made up anyway.
Support for Their Natural Rhythms
When babies are first born, they don’t produce their own melatonin yet and actually get this from their mother’s breastmilk. This is often why babies seem to have their days and nights mixed up when they’re first born. In an effort to support the development of their natural sleep-wake cycle, it should always look like the day during the daytime and look like the night during the night time. What does this mean? No black-out curtains for naps, but black-out curtains are great for overnight. Getting morning and evening sunlight signals specific hormone production to support sleep-wake cycles as well.
Babies also may wake up multiple times throughout the night looking for food or comfort (or both). These wake-ups are actually protective against sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and are not something that needs to be “fixed.” Whether they are signaling for food or comfort doesn’t matter, these are both valid needs for babies (remember the part about not knowing that they won’t be eaten by a tiger at any moment). So again, just because we know they are safe in their house and food will be available whenever they need it, doesn’t mean they know that. And they don’t know that cognitively, they feel that physically.
That’s All
Really, that’s it. The above three things cover pretty much everything you’ll run into when it comes to taking care of your newborn, and helping them thrive. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t think you need 500 gadgets, monitors, toys, etc for them. Just give them your attention, your responsiveness, your love and let their development unfold before you – they’ll take care of the rest!
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