Your Responsibilities and Bonding With Your Baby

Perhaps the most difficult part of the responsibility of caring for a new baby is being on call constantly, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week, with never a moment off. No other job requires such dedication as that of parenting.

Babies don't eat, sleep, or cry on schedule. Your infant calls upon you for food or comfort at any and every hour of the day or night, whether you are asleep, or ill, or occupied with a project of the utmost importance. In short, you must adjust your lifestyle to accommodate the total dependence of your baby. This shift in the focus of your life may be traumatic for you at first, especially if you have been particularly independent and unencumbered. In this section, we'll talk about your baby responsibilites and the importance of bonding with your baby.

Supplying the Basics

The primary responsibilities of parents are to provide their children with food, clothing, and shelter -- the basic requirements of human life. In principle, all but the most poverty-stricken of new parents can accept those responsibilities with few qualms because they are the requirements they already fulfill for themselves. It's the day-to-day details of supplying them that may make you feel insecure and far from confident in caring for your infant. You may feel, as some parents do, that while your childbirth education courses have prepared you very well for actually producing a baby, you've not had adequate preparation for caring for your child. The all-important questions of what, how, when, how often, and why have not been answered to your complete satisfaction.

In truth, they cannot be because every baby, and every set of parents, is unique. Every family is different from every other, and every individual in every family is different from all the others. You'll try out and perhaps discard some routines and procedures before you are comfortable in handling even the most ordinary of your responsibilities to your infant. You may wonder if the trial and error method of mastering a skill is a suitable approach for the serious work of rearing a human being.

In searching for knowledge about how to care for their babies, many parents are apt to be intimidated by so-called experts, who may include the baby's grandparents, aunts and uncles, and next-door neighbors as well as physicians and psychologists, and to accept as truth any scrap of advice they are given, whether it feels right to them or their experience substantiates it.

Of course, at times nothing substitutes for the knowledgeable instructions and advice of experts in the professional fields of medicine, nutrition, and child psychology. But it is important for you, as a new parent, to learn to trust yourself. Remember that there is no one right way to perform most tasks involved in child care. You can read, you can take classes, you can question your doctor closely, you can listen to your friends and relatives, but ultimately you must make your own decisions about what is best for your own child. And because you know this child better than anyone else in the world, you are far more likely than others to make the best decisions.

Remember, as you make those decisions, to enjoy your baby as you learn to care for her. Try to look at parenting not as a series of problems to overcome or even, in the positive language of public relations, as challenges to meet. For a little while, at least, let the rest of the world go by; appreciate the miracle of every day.

Bonding With Your Baby

The importance of touching. This statement bears repeating: Picking up and holding your baby will not spoil her. The importance of touch to an infant cannot be overstressed, a fact now recognized as part of the bonding process encouraged by doctors. Bonding with your baby seems greatly enhanced when parents have extended physical contact with the baby immediately after the birth. It is even said that mothers who are separated from their newborn infants during the first hour after birth are somewhat less confident about their intuitive mothering skills than those who go through the bonding process.

Your baby's skin is her most well-developed sensory organ immediately after birth and the largest organ of the body. Its stimulation can have a profound effect on the baby's behavior. Your gentle, confident, and firm touch will calm your baby, as well as assure her of your love.

Bonding through food. Feeding the baby, either by bottle or by breast, takes a great deal of time and energy. But whichever method you choose, you will find feeding time is a time of closeness. You are giving the baby life-giving nourishment and thus meeting the child's most basic physical need. At the same time, you are fulfilling a deep psychological need for love and attention. As you provide food, you are holding and cuddling the baby, and he is getting to know your touch and your voice. A bond that will never be severed is developing between you and your baby.

You know that you are responsible for providing your baby with food, clothing and shelter. You've read about the importance of bonding with your baby as he builds confidence that you will accommodate his needs.

On the next page, we'll talk about some of the more specific tasks that you will encounter, such as handling, diapering, and dressing your baby.

This information is solely for informational purposes. IT IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. Neither the Editors of Consumer Guide (R), Publications International, Ltd., the author nor publisher take responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, procedure, exercise, dietary modification, action or application of medication which results from reading or following the information contained in this information. The publication of this information does not constitute the practice of medicine, and this information does not replace the advice of your physician or other health care provider. Before undertaking any course of treatment, the reader must seek the advice of their physician or other health care provider.