The blog expresses my personal opinion.
I have been mulling this over for a while and creating one list after the other in my head and then dismissing it, because it felt just too long.
When you are a new mum there is soooooo much to learn and think about – and your brain is not doing well with information at the moment anyway, as you have what people call a ‘baby brain’ and it is often said with a lot of excuses or a negative tone, like it is something bad.
I sometimes wonder how this society ended up turning a lot of women and children related things into something negative.
For me there is nothing more beautiful than a human being willing to meet and connect with another person and that is what you do when you have a ‘baby brain’.
How do babies communicate?
On the physical level they cuddle and relax or squirm and tense up.
On the language level they cry to voice their needs or make happy noises and chat with you when everything is all-right.
But there is so much more to communication than hearing and seeing.
There is the emotional level, which communicates a lot non-verbally and how can you pick these communications up? By shifting from your left brain – the logical, thinking side, to your right brain (your baby brain) – the creative side. From here you can sense/feel (intuitive) what your baby wants and needs. Oxytocin is a great help in making that shift.
It might take you a while to fine tune it (as most of us have forgotten how this works) and in my experience it is very often spot on, even if it doesn’t make sense from a logical (left side brain) point of view.
And from here I come to my 3 top tips:
1. Trust your intuition/instincts – no-one knows your baby better then you.
2. Forget most of the things you read about positioning and work with your body shape. If your nipple points outwards – tummy to mummy is not going to work for you. There are not 1-5 positions (depending on to who you talk) there are 360 (sorry – I have forgotten who coined that phrase) and I am sure you will find a few that will work for you……and NO breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt!
3. If you can’t work it out: Ask for help – it is not a sign of weakness, nor are you a failure. We are living in a society where we don’t grow up seeing women breastfeeding, often your baby is the first baby you take care of, therefore you don’t have bucket loads of knowledge to fall back on. Breastfeeding has sadly become a learned skill, rather than being an innate one.
If you can view your relationship with your baby like you would view any other new relationship: that it takes time to get to know each other – and the first year of babies’ live as the last part of your pregnancy – life will be a lot less stressful and hopefully that makes space for you being able to enjoy your baby 🙂
I wish you lots of wonderful connective moments using your beautiful ‘baby brain’
Here is some new research to the theme:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150415133158.htm
You might also be interested in visiting these websites:
Jodie May Smith: http://lifewithpinkprincesses.co.uk/
The secret life of Kate: http://www.thesecretlifeofkate.blogspot.co.uk/
Breast4Babies: http://breast4babies.blogspot.co.uk/
Smiling like sunshine: http://www.smilinglikesunshine.com/
Barefoot Books: http://www.barefootbooks.com/marketplace/38341