How a New Baby Communicates, and How We Can Promote Healthy Connections
I would like to talk to you about the wonders of newborn communication.
Not just in the early months, but also in the womb. It is simply untrue that babies are born Tabula Rasa and are simply shaped by nurture after birth. It is a myth that in the early weeks babies just sleep eat, poo and cry, and are not aware of their surroundings. It is also incorrect that you only need to take care of their physical needs, like feeding, bathing, changing their nappies and creating a comfortable space for them to sleep. They enter the world as sentient beings, who have a strong need for loving communication and nurturing, to develop and grow healthily.
All babies are unique, and have the ability to communicate with you in their own way.
A full-term baby is born with 9 months of experience, and is a capable social being. One of the most important ways you can nurture your baby’s development is through your love and engagement with them even during pregnancy. In utero their brains grow at a phenomenal rate, with around 250,00 brain cells created every minute. Along with their bodies, their five senses are also developing. For example, a foetus will develop the sense of hearing from about 16 weeks into pregnancy. This will begin as vibrations and then later become mature sounds. Some of these you might not even notice yourself — the gurgle of your stomach and whoosh of air in and out of your lungs. This is why newborns enjoy the sound of white noise as it reminds them of the sounds in utero. At around weeks 27 to 30, babies can turn their heads and respond to sounds they hear outside the womb. Studies have shown that a foetus’s heart rate also increases when it hears its mother’s voice. This means that when they are born, they can recognise the familiar sounds of their parents, siblings and environment. The human voice is one of the only sounds thought not to be distorted by amniotic fluid and body tissues. This is why a newborn will turn towards and recognise the voice of a parent or family member over a stranger. So talking and singing to a baby in the womb is helping to ease their transition into the world and aide their brain development even before they are born. Research shows us that babies learn and remember life in the womb, especially in the third trimester. For example, if you sing a particular song to a baby in pregnancy, they will respond and recognise its pattern or melody after birth.
Loving communication in utero, or prenatal bonding, could mean talking to your baby when they are awake, stroking them, dancing with them and playing. Some parents will gently push into their womb in one place, and then maybe the other side, marvelling at how their baby responds, often turn taking and pushing back. You can talk to them about anything - your day, things that are on your mind, things that you are planning for the future. They won’t judge you, they are great listeners.
The first 1001 days of a baby’s life (from conception to their second birthday) is a critical time for brain development, and protecting their future health and wellbeing.
This is the fastest rate of development in our lives. Newborns show us in so many ways, their experience of both pregnancy and coming into the world. They are born longing for connections, empathy and relationships. This can be plainly seen when looking at your newborn and seeing how their eyes engage and follow you. They will be excited to get to know you, and for you to know them. I always love witnessing this meeting at the births I attend, when a newborn and parents finally meet one another. Every baby is hard wired to communicate, and to seek out love and connection. Talking to them in the womb begins this relationship. Although a baby is born with billions of brain cells they are not yet fully connected. The way they do this is through experience. So, the way we relate with our babies, hold them, respond to their cries, talk, smile and play with them, will help to grow their brains. Parenthood and babyhood are works in progress, and are relational.
Gentle touch can help stimulate and fine tune a baby’s own sense of itself.
It can lower their stress response and activate their parasympathetic nervous system, promoting a calm and relaxed state. Touch can also reduce the risk of infection and protect and enhance mental and physical health. It's also plays a crucial role in the attachment process, allowing caregivers to establish deep connections with their little ones and helps to wire a baby's social brain. It regulates the dopamine and opioid systems, which in turn can make the stress system more resilient. As well as feeling lovely to both caregiver and baby, it’s amazing that something as simple as touch and skin to skin can have such profound effects on many aspects of a baby's development.
The early months are particularly important. This is a time when brain pathways are forming through experience and when many of these reach their peak. This image shows how rapidly a baby’s sensory pathways are formed before birth and their first months of life.
The language pathway develops at an incredible rate, and peaks at around 9 months old, even before an infant speaks their first word.
There is a saying that ‘neuron’s that fire together, wire together’. This means that the more positive neural pathways being reinforced in the early months, the more that will remain. There is a natural pruning process that occurs at around age one. Pruning is a way of shaping the baby’s brain according to their unique lived experience by discarding excess cells that have not been activated. However, the brain continues to adapt through experiences, so even if a little one hasn’t had the best start in life, their brain will continue to make the most of positive experiences, we call this neuroplasticity.
A large proportion of brain growth and neural connections are made during sleep.
In sleep we pass though periods where our conscious brain is active and processing information (known as REM [Rapid Eye Movement] sleep or active sleep and periods where our conscious brain is quiet and ‘resting’ (known as Quiet Sleep). REM sleep is when we dream. Quiet sleep is considered to be more restorative sleep, during which we are ‘re-charging’ both brain and body. During gestation babies’ sleep is mostly Active/REM sleep. A new baby will also spend a lot of sleep time in Active/REM sleep. This is important as it helps them to map their body and develop motor and sensory embodiment. In this type of sleep you may see their faces moving and limbs twitching and they often have fast or variable breathing. This early REM sleep, is where they can be easily woken or disturbed and generally lasts around 20 minutes until they pass into a deep or quiet sleep where they appear more restful and have more regular breathing patterns. Active/REM sleep reduces with age and a babies’ sleep cycles is generally around 60 minutes long,
A baby can use their whole body to communicate and no gesture is random.
It all has meaning. Learning to read a baby is like learning a new constantly evolving, language. They have distinct facial expressions, sounds and rates of breath to show us how they are feeling and what their needs are. They can communicate hunger, tiredness, playfulness, over stimulation, pain and happiness and yes, a newborn can smile and it’s not always because of wind! They can bring their hands to their mouths to help them regulate and stay calm when things get a little overwhelming or avert their gaze. They have a preference for faces, can see, and have a desire to be seen. They want you to gaze and interact with them.
Sometimes a baby will cry, and this can be challenging.
Crying is also a way of communicating and letting you know about a need they have. It may be a cry to alert you to an immediate need, like a wet nappy or a memory cry. Babies may also cry because they are hungry, cold or lonely, or have a restrictive piece of clothing that’s upsetting them. Sometimes they may cry due to an implicit memory, maybe around the sensations of birth or something that occurred in pregnancy. Over time and with care and patience, you will get to know your own baby’s preferences, based on their own personality. You will get to know the sights and sounds and type of touch they like and what they don’t. This is known as co-regulation and also helps to protect a newborns delicate brain from higher levels of stress hormones that can be produced when a baby cries for an extended period. Babies will also look to you to help them calm and soothe and manage big emotions. They observe how you process them and sensitively return them. This helps them to build coping strategies and resilience over time. Their nervous system is still immature, so they may look to you to check how safe their environment is. This is often why a parent who becomes overwhelmed by a baby’s cry’s, may themselves cry harder, whereas another adult, who is not so sensitised by the cries, may calm them down more easily. It is not because they don’t love you, but because you are both reacting to the distress of the other.
How we respond to our babies is important, and when we aim to meet our babies’ needs, they build trust in us. There is no such thing as spoiling a baby, but equally, no one is perfect and we don’t always get this right. It takes a lot of trial and error and observation. Donald Winicott talks of this as ‘the good enough parent’. This is the beginning of a new relationship. It takes time to get to know each other. You are learning all about your baby and they are learning all about you. Some babies, like adults are more sensitive than others and may need more help and a gentler approach.
When a baby is awake, their eyes open, but their body is quiet and arms relaxed by their side, this is a great time to interact and talk with them.
A baby can mimic your facial expressions, for example, they may copy you sticking your tongue out at them. This is a lovely reciprocal game you can play together. They often use their hands to display their feelings, if their hands come to the middle of their body or they hold them near their chest or their face, they’re sharing that they are having to work on self-regulation more at that moment. Their fingers can also splay wide with stress or form tight fists when they are concentrating hard. Their hands often soften and relax during a feed. During interactions, you may find that they avert their gaze, which means that they might need a little break. Give them space for this and respond appropriately if they engage again. Remember everything is new to a little one, and it can quickly become overwhelming for them. Recognising these small gestures helps your baby reinforce your relationship and communicates that you have seen and noticed their needs. Your touch, voice, smell and appropriate actions will all aide them with difficult transitions. This emphatic response helps them to learn how to ask for help when they need to and trust that people around them will respond. It also provides a firm foundation for health and development and fosters caring emphatic children and adults.
New babies are born knowing how to protect their sleep.
You might notice they respond to a new sound or light while they are in a deep sleep, but you will also notice this reduces quite quickly, as they learn to recognise the agitator and block it out. This is known as habituation, and all babies have different levels of response to this. Some need a little more help with sound or light than others, others can be more easily disturbed and need a quiet dark space to rest in. Some seem to sleep through anything. What do you notice with your baby?
Often when we learn we will become parents, we imagine what our baby may be like, and how we will feel as parents.
We often picture an older baby, and therefore find a newborn’s cues confusing. The Paediatric specialist, Dr T. Berry Brazelton focused on the social, interactive capabilities of a baby, and their unique characteristics.
He discusses how their states change frequently, from deep sleep to light sleep, to drowsy, to alert and attentive, to active alert and or fussing and crying. He talks about how a baby will have their individual way of moving through these states and that you can observe if they are smooth and predictable or unpredictable and abrupt. He set up the Brazelton newborn behaviour centre (NBO) to teach parents and health professionals how to spot a newborn’s means of communication. By noticing and trying new ways to help soothe them, you will learn all about your baby’s individual temperament. Holding, touching, singing, playing will all illicit a different response. Babies have unique facial expressions, body language and vocal sounds. Learning about your baby takes time and can feel over whelming. Try and ensure that you get lots of support from other adults so that you can enjoy this special time.
When babies are approaching a development leap, they often become unsettled, seek more comfort and may have changes in their feeding and sleeping patterns.
This is because as the brain changes, the whole body system needs to adjust. These unsettled periods, may seem like a regression, but in fact they are progressions and mean that your baby is developing a healthy new pattern. Often a parent will notice that these leaps lead to new skills. Typically, in the first year these touch points happen at around three weeks, six to eight weeks, four months, seven months, nine months and at one year. These will continue throughout infant hood and beyond. Parents may need more support themselves during these times, so that they can more easily help their little ones.
Often, how we were parented influences how we parent.
That means that the way you respond may influence how your baby goes on to respond to their children. So, the love you show today will be a legacy shared through generations. You will know your baby better than anyone and will be the ideal person to make the best choices, however our choices can be influenced by the knowledge and resources available to us at that time.
I am trained in Brazelton’s newborn behaviour observation (NBO) and find many parents find these observations very enlightening.
Please ask me if you would like to know more or if you would like me to carry out this observation during my home visit with you. Biodynamic craniosacral therapy is also a really helpful and gentle way for a baby to tell its story and show any stresses, strong sensations or compressions it may feel.
