Newborn or Time Traveler?

In the previous column, you read that our babies are born quite underdeveloped. They have only 9 months to mature in the womb, not the full 12, so their brains can still fit through the mother’s pelvis. As a result, the child, and particularly the brain, is born underdeveloped. This naturally has implications for the fourth trimester, which refers to the first three months after birth.

What we do in our Western world once the baby is born and what the baby (which is essentially still a fetus) expects from us are often very different things. Our newborns are like time travelers who suddenly arrive in a completely different era where everything is vastly different from what they expect and need.

We place our newborns in a beautiful crib and feed them every few hours. We take pride when our babies sleep through the night. But is this really the best way to help our children develop properly and fully?

We all know that development occurs through exposure to stimuli. If you never expose a child to light, they would be permanently blind; if you never let them hear, they would be permanently deaf; and if you never let them move, they would never learn to walk.

Thus, exposure to stimuli is essential for the development of our babies. This includes: the up-and-down movement with the mother to stimulate and develop the balance organ; smelling, feeling, and seeing everything that the mother smells, feels, and sees to develop the senses; close (skin-to-skin) contact so the baby can learn to feel and recognize their body; constant access to nutrition to support optimal growth and brain development; and perhaps most importantly, the love of the mother to meet the child’s emotional needs.

For the mother, this can be challenging, especially because Western society is set up differently. Still, I want to make a case for our newborns so that these time travelers feel welcome and will eventually thrive on this earth.

In future columns, you can read about how to optimize your child’s brain development and, consequently, their physical development.