Baby Care: First Year

Lesson 3: Bonding: Building Attachment

In recent decades, our culture has moved away from natural human parenting. We are often encouraged to ignore our instincts and follow someone else's rules for caring for our babies. Companies offer us products that substitute for our presence and care. Your baby can survive on formula, pacifiers, security objects, and playpens, but he will thrive on you. Nature has given you everything you need to care for your baby: arms to hold him, breasts to feed him, and the biological drive to protect and care for him.

In this lesson, we will discuss how you can develop a trusting and affectionate relationship with your baby by learning his nonverbal language, our primal "forgotten" language, and by responding appropriately to meet his needs using your body and your instincts.

Bonding and Attachment

The terms bonding and attachment are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference. One grows out of the other. Bonding is about developing trust, and attachment is about developing affection.

As soon as your baby is born, you begin to bond with her by responding sensitively to her signals. As her attempts at communicating her needs are met with your attempts to understand and meet her needs, she develops trust in you, and in her ability to communicate. She is learning, and so are you. You're getting to know one another. As she gets better at giving cues, and as you get better at reading them, an affectionate relationship develops between you and her. Your baby regards herself by how you respond to her. For this reason, it's important to respond to her cries as well as to her more pleasant signals with love and reassurance. Show her that it's acceptable to express sadness, discomfort, and pain as well as happiness and contentment.

A high-touch and high-interaction style of parenting that encourages attachment is beneficial to you and your baby in many ways. A baby parented in this way tends to develop better intellectually, emotionally, and physically.

Intellectually. Your baby learns best when she is in a state of quiet alertness. Attachment parenting helps her spend more time in this state instead of working hard to get her needs met. More than any educational toy or product, the most important influence on her intellectual development is your responsiveness to her cues.
Emotionally. Your baby has trouble regulating her emotions. When you respond to her before her cries escalate out of control, she has an easier time calming herself.
Physically. Your baby releases the hormone cortisol when she is stressed. Too low or too high a level will affect her growth. An insecure attachment to you can cause either problem. Her securely attached relationship with you keeps her cortisol level in balance, so she can use her energy to grow rather than to work hard trying to get you to meet her needs.

Everything you do with your baby is an opportunity for bonding and building attachment. Holding, feeding, diapering, and bathing your baby are all ways of bonding with her. She thrives on closeness and interaction with you. For this reason, it's important to be cautious in using products designed to substitute for your presence and care. You already have everything your baby needs.