The bumps of life can be physical or they can be mental. The mental bumps of life are about feeling out-of-control. The photo shows me gripping the rail (tighter than can be seen in the picture) at the top of Yosemite Falls (one of my favorite places). Even
though I wanted with all my heart to be there, the situation made my feel very out-of-control. I also remember returning to the same place with my son, Michael, (then 18 years old) and feeling just as out-of-control as I waited for him to climb down to the rail at the edge, feeling that if anything happened to him I would never get over it. I even had a dream throughout childhood and youth of falling in a silo, unable to grab onto the sides. (Kansas out-of-control dream) It gradually became clear to me as I "grew" thru my mid 50s that "Life is a recurring out-of -control feeling." It begins when we slide out of our mother (or are lifted out, which is more often in today's world in an attempt to prevent birth trauma) into the crazy world outside the uterine hotel. The out-of-control (OOC) feelings continue as we experience touch (the ob's hands pulling us out), the bright light overhead, air on our wet body, suction in our nose and mouth, the sound of excited voices crying out in excitement at our coming, the softness of our mother's abdomen and the closeness of being held in her arms followed the flatness of the warmer and a lot more touching. Then there is the grease in our eyes and the stab in the leg. And this is only the beginning of dozens of OOC feelings which we experience in the first hours and days of life.It continues as we are passed from warmer to bassinet to relatives arms to infant carrier(which when carried by anyone must feel like a quick jet ride to a new baby- they strap you in semi-tight and up, up and away!) to the car for the ride home. And we head off into the rest of our life.
An OOC feeling can be handled in two ways: we can avoid it and it will continue to cause us to feel out-of-control every time we are in the same situation, or we can move directly into it and gradually or suddenly realize that the feeling can be tolerated and that our mind and body can learn to deal with it in a positive and productive manner. In early life this process requires that our care takers be willing to allow us to enter situations which cause OOC feelings like the flat place in our bassinet, or the air on our body when changing diapers and clothes, or the voices and sounds of a normal home.
Everything that is not like the uterine hotel will create an OOC feeling for each baby initially and his first response will be an opinion, which in baby language is fussing or crying out. New babies are creatures of habit like all of us and they all have opinions about what is not their habit. Breathing, sucking, swallowing, peeing and pooping are all new experiences, at least when not done under water.
As Dr. Sammons says in The Self-Calmed Baby, "the babies experience. . .is not very different from what yours would be if I took you blind-folded and deposited you without explanation in outer Mongolia." Babies reactions and adjustment to each of these new OOC feelings and the amount of opinions they have vary with each totally unique baby. And the reaction of each set of parents to this transition and their ability to allow their baby to experience OOC feelings and to be understanding listeners as the baby has opinions is just as variable.
Parents often say "Our baby has her days and nights backwards". It's more likely that she has her days and nights straight, it's just backwards to ours. New mommies will say "She wants to eat every hour" without knowing that babies use sucking as their primary means to handle the stress of the outside world. A parent will say "The baby woke up because his diaper was wet" to which I respond, "These diapers will hold a quart and all the other babies are sleeping through with wet diapers." In the past we held babies facing up in our arms so we could see them and speak to them, and when they started fussing about the situation, we began to bounce them up and down. We now know that the face up position is disorganizing to babies and that they prefer ventral pressure against their chest which is organizing for them. This pressure can be created by laying them over our arm with their head at our elbow or by holding them against us with a hand across their chest and them facing away from us. In addition, babies open their eyes when they lean forward and looking can also be calming for them. (I was always told to keep my arms off the table when eating. Now my friend Tim Healey has given me permission to have my arms on the table because is allows my mind to engage in better listening) Guess I have to throw in a Shannon childhood story or I will forget it. One day my brother, Mark, was sitting at the table at lunch and (since he couldn't have his arms on the table) started waving his napkin in the air. My mother sternly scolded, "Mark, is that necessary?" to which Mark responded, "No! It's a nakin."
Even the sound of our voice and looking directly face to face can at times be too much stress for a new baby. " Understanding listening" means observing what we do to or for our baby that makes him more calm and relaxed. This can often include doing nothing. As Dr. T. Berry Brazelton suggests, we need to look for what babies can do rather than what they can't do. Each baby is born with a different temperment and with a variably mature nervous system. Some babies are very "laid back" and little seems to upset them, while others seem to have less good filters to noises and sensations and can be extremely stressed by normal baby life in the outside world. Even pooping can be a very confusing event for baby and parents. I had the privilege to learn from a very "colicky" baby the the sensations of pooping can cause great distress. This baby would only poop every 5-6 days, but he wasn't constipated because the stools were very mushy and soft. However, starting about the time he should have had his next poop (with normal frequency), this baby would get progressively fussier with each passing day until by the 5th or 6th day he would be screaming most of the day. Then he would finally pass a humongous stool and he would settle into the most calm, relaxed mood, as if "Whew, I survived and I didn't blow my bottom off!" Recent brain research has revealed that we have nerve fibers related to perceiving stress around every hollow organ in our body. So it is not surprising that a certain babies have what seems like exaggerated feelings about the volume of stool in their colon.
Bill Sammons in The Self-Calmed Baby provides the following insight into the importance of being understanding listeners:
"The key to putting everyone on a firmer foundation lies in the way we think about newborns. In the last twenty years (written in 1989) babies finally have been recognized as the human beings they are rather than the passive, bland slates they were once thought to be. (This change was in large part due to the work of Dr. Brazelton) From the moment of birth, a baby can see and hear and think. He's an individual, with unique concerns and abilities. Like his parents, the infant is a partner with equal responsibility for creating and sustaining a happy relationship with members of the family. To carry out his part of the bargain, however, he must learn to communicate and to develop clear behavior signals, skills for which is naturally competent."
"Self-calming makes all of this possible. With self-calming the infant is able to assert control over his own reactions to those things or events that used to make him cry or become disorganized. By sucking on his hand, staring out a window, maneuvering into a certain body position, or some other self-calming skill, he can keep himself from crying (feeling out-of-control = my words) or stop crying - without help from his parents. Thus he develops an enhanced feeling of security and competence. And the infant's success in self-calming is circular. The calmer the baby, the greater the quantity and quality of time his parents can spend with him (without them feeling out-of-control = my words). The more time the spend together, the better their relationship grows, as each becomes more adept at communication. Then, and only then, do love and attachment grow and flourish."
Dr. Sammons suggested that new parents can "learn what your baby is trying to say more quickly if you begin from a premise that your child is trying to provide some message through his cries. Rather than guessing at the message, which is likely to cause your responses to be inappropriate and confusing much of the time, start with a relative low-level response and then slowly build your involvement until the crying stops, indicating that you have met your child's need."
Possible initial things to try include:
1) listen, if the baby is just fussing to see if it continues and escalates
2) talk to the baby from across the room
3) go to the baby and apply pressure to his chest somewhat firmly
4) talk to the baby from closer distance
5) see if the baby will suck on his own hand
6) check to see if the baby needs to be changed
7) talk to the baby again
8) pick the baby up and walk over to a chair and hold in a ventral pressure position
9) hold the baby with ventral pressure and move side to side sitting or walking
10) do 8 or 9 while letting the baby suck on your finger
11) try feeding the baby
Feeding will always solve the problem unless the baby is extremely fatigued or overstimulated.
This is because feeding meets all the babies priorities except sleep. Feeding provides the baby with all the possible soothing behaviors including touch, warmth, sucking, rhythmic stimulation (rocking), social stimulation and food. But as Dr. Sammons points out, "But consider how excessive the response is if, in reality, the baby simply wants to be talked to and the parent responds by feeding the child: it is like the baby asking for a quarter and the parent gives him a twenty-dollar bill and telling him to keep the change. For a while the baby may be placated, but the parent soon goes broke. The physical and emotional demand is too high to sustain. And no communication is established; the baby always gets the same response."
Speaking of money, I would add my own two cents. Feeding a baby who is not hungry to calm him is "mood altering" with food. We now have a country in which there are more obese people than over-weight people. Can we afford to continue to teach young babies to eat to make themselves happy. Food is fuel and has the purpose of making our bodies go. If we learn to calm ourselves early in life (the idea that each person is in charge of his own happiness) without the use of food, we will be much better prepared for all the bumps of life and OOC feeling that come our way.
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