Besides attachment parenting helping the baby’s hormones, it also helps the mother’s body chemistry. Maternal behaviours, especially breastfeeding, result in an outpouring of the hormones prolactin and oxytocin. These “mothering hormones” act as biological helpers, giving mums motherly feelings. They may, in fact, be the biological basis of the concept of mother’s intuition. Prolactin levels increase ten- to twenty-fold within thirty minutes after mother begins breastfeeding. Most of it is gone again within an hour. Prolactin is a short-acting substance, so to get the best response a mother must breastfeed frequently – which is what babies want anyway. Hormones are biological helpers that improve the behaviour of the baby and the caregiving of the mother. Your choice in parenting style can make them work for you.
“But won’t prolonged breastfeeding spoil a toddler? He needs to become independent.” Actually the reverse is true – children who are not weaned before their time are more independent. Premature weaning breaks a connection before the child is equipped to make other connections. Extended nursing, rather than encouraging a child to stay dependent, creates conditions that encourage independence. Offering a familiar connection (breastfeeding) during tumultuous toddlerhood gives the child an anchor from which he can explore the unfamiliar.
The idea of breastfeeding past your child’s first birthday may seem strange to you, but we believe that it is important that children not be weaned before they show signs of readiness. Weaning is a part of growing up. It should take place gradually. We have noticed that children who have been weaned too early show what we call diseases of premature weaning: aggression, anger, more tantrum-like behaviour, anxious clinging to caregivers, and less ability to form deep and intimate relationships. Breastfeeding seems to mellow out the aggressive tendencies of toddlers and restores balance in their behaviour. In 1990, former surgeon general Dr Antonia Novello, after extolling the benefits of breastfeeding, added, “It’s the lucky baby, I feel, who continues to nurse until he is two.” (See “Weaning from Attachment”.)
Can a bottle-feeding mother achieve the same degree of closeness with her baby as the breastfeeding mother?
We believe she can, but she has to work at it harder since she is not part of a natural feedback loop enjoyed by the breastfeeding baby and mother. The bottle-feeding mother is more likely to schedule her baby’s feedings, because formula-fed babies are easier to schedule (artificial baby milks take longer to digest). Bottle-feeders tend to worry more about spoiling their babies. A bottle-feeding mother does not have the benefit of the hormonal boost that happens with breastfeeding or the intimate skin-to-skin connection. Holding her baby lovingly in the breastfeeding position, caressing her baby during feeding, and giving a nurturing response to cries can stimulate her mothering hormones, yet the effects are not as great as with breastfeeding. By carrying her baby a lot, responding to her baby’s cries, and making feeding time a nurturing interaction, a bottle-feeding mother can achieve a level of sensitivity and knowledge of her baby closer to what comes with breastfeeding than if she didn’t add these attachment boosters. We realize there are mothers who would be deeply unhappy breastfeeding. It’s important for a mother to choose a method of feeding that reflects a happy mother to her baby. Perhaps as inner conflicts are explored she’ll want to breastfeed her next baby.
3. Wear Your Baby
Beginning in the early weeks, hold or wear your baby in a baby sling for as many hours a day as you and your baby enjoy. Since 1985 we have been studying how babywearing improves behaviour. Parents would come into our surgery exclaiming, “As long as I wear our baby he’s content.” Research has validated this parental observation: babies who are carried more cry less. For centuries parents have known that motion calms babies, especially the rhythmic motion of parents’ walking. Carrying modifies behaviour primarily by promoting quiet alertness – the state in which babies behave best.
Babywearing helps you know your infant.
Babywearing also improves the way babies feel. The carried baby feels like a part of the parents’ world. He goes where they go, sees what they see, hears what they hear and say. Babywearing helps the baby feel included and important, which creates a feeling of rightness that translates into better behaviour and more opportunities for learning. The brain is stimulated through motion, increasing the baby’s intellectual capacity, a forerunner to the child’s ability to make appropriate sensory-motor adaptations in the future.
Wearing improves the sensitivity of the parents as well. Because your baby is so close to you, in your arms, in constant contact, you get to know him better. Closeness promotes familiarity. Because your baby fusses less, he is more fun to be with and you tend to carry your baby more. The connection grows deeper.
Like breastfeeding, babywearing promotes eye-to-eye contact. As I watch babywearing pairs parade through my surgery, I notice that not only are these babies and mothers physically connected, they are visually in tune. What a wonderful way to learn to read each other’s faces. As you will learn throughout this book, the ability to read and respond to each other’s “looks” is a powerful discipline tool. Over the years I have observed that “sling babies” become children who are easier to discipline.
4. Play with Your Baby
What does playing have to do with discipline, you may wonder. Play helps you know your baby’s capabilities and age-appropriate behaviours at each stage of development. It sets the stage for you and your baby to enjoy one another. It opens the door to a valuable discipline tool you will need at all stages of your child’s life – humour. To smile, laugh, and giggle your way through a situation sidesteps a conflict, gets the child’s attention, opening his mind to your discipline. You want your baby to grow up to be a happy person, so it follows that you want him to have lots of practice being happy. And nothing makes a baby happier than to play with mum or dad. If the child is used to following instruction during play, he is likely to listen to you during correction.
Play is part of discipline.
Playing together gives your baby the message, “You are important to me”, a valuable feeling for growing self-esteem. Peek-a-boo, stacking blocks, doing puzzles, playing pretend helps you get behind the eyes of your child and view things from her perspective – a valuable discipline tool for you to learn. Play brings discipline down to earth. With the proliferation of parenting classes and the overemphasis on “techniques” of modern discipline, it’s easy for parents to get caught up in the science of discipline yet overlook the simplicity. Much of discipline is just being with your baby enjoying the simple things of life.
5. Share Sleep with Your Baby
Nighttime is scary for little people, but our usual Western custom is to separate parents and babies at night. We would like you to consider nighttime not as a block of time for you to finally get away from your baby but a special time when you can strengthen your connection. Every family needs to work out a sleeping arrangement where all sleep best, and we believe the nighttime environment that can best strengthen your parent-child attachment allows for baby sleeping near you – a style we call sharing sleep.
Our observations over more than twenty years, our examination of studies of mother-infant sleep-sharing pairs, and our own studies on one of our babies lead us to conclude that a baby’s overall physiological system works better when baby sleeps next to mother. The cardio-respiratory system is more regulated, less stressed; therefore, baby