Wearing in a bag helps mothers and newborns get the right start

The way a mother and child begin their life together often sets the tone for how successful their relationship will be in the future. At the beginning of the newborn period, we focus on what the mother does for the child, as if caring for the child consists only in what the mother gives, and the child takes. After twenty years of pediatric practice and twenty-five years of parental experience, I grew to understand that such a concept of constant parental self-giving in the first months of a child's life is only partly true. Not only do parents develop a child, but a child develops parents. The childcare system ideally - when it functions best - consists of reciprocal returns, in which all participants show best in each other. Here's how this system works.

The mother( and to a lesser extent the father) has a biological instinct that attracts her to her child;instinctive desire to take the child, carry it, nurse and just be with him. This is called mother-to-child attachment. In some mothers, this attachment arises by itself - the maternal intuition. Other mothers feel some uncertainty in this intuition. That's when the child does his thing.

Just as mothers have features that lead to their attachment, children are born with many addictive qualities that lead to the mother's desire and, perhaps, even the need to be near her child. The child walks, sucks, smiles, he is so round and charming - all these properties of the child are of benefit to the mother. In the body of the mother there are so-called maternal hormones, namely prolactin and oxytocin. The child's affective behavior causes these hormones to enter the bloodstream of the mother. In this way, the child gives the mother a biological impetus, which in turn helps her to give the child a mother-to-child care of this quality and in the amount required by the child - here it is, the mutual return between two needy members of the biological pair. If we make the assumption that the higher the level of these hormones and the more it is constant, the easier it is for the mother to nurse the baby, it follows that the mother should be advised to choose an approach to maternal care that would keep her hormones at a high level. This is exactly what happens,

if she is carrying a child. The constant presence of a child - this is what supports the activity of the hormonal system, in contrast to short-term communication. Let's do a deeper analysis.

The activity of hormones is evaluated by measuring their biological half-life - that is, the time required for half of the blood in the bloodstream to be consumed. Some substances have a long half-life, others are short. Maternal hormones have a very short biological half-life - about twenty minutes. This means that in order for the mother to keep a high level of these hormones constantly, she needs stimulation about every twenty minutes. Which takes place if the mother wears her child. Constant presence, frequent feeding and touch support maternal hormones at a high level.