One Year

March 7th, 2014 I had my first ultrasound.  I heard my little girl's heartbeat for the first time and suddenly my pregnancy became more real.  I still couldn't believe it, but there she was, just a clump of cells approximately the size of a blueberry--a fuzzy ball on the black and white screen.  Now, a full year later, I have a beautiful four-month-old human being in my life.  The changes that one year can bring are amazing and only magnified when I have photo evidence.

One year ago...my little blueberry.

How can anyone doubt this is a miracle?

In one of my classes a few years ago we watched a documentary called Rock-A-Bye Baby that demonstrates the importance of movement in child development.  The film is from the seventies and I'm sure there is more recent research on the topic, but I was amazed by the findings of Harry Harlow when he studied baby monkeys separated from their mothers.  When they became adults, the lack of movement (being carried on their mothers) as babies led to agressive and anti-social behavior.  The adult monkeys refused to interact with others, demonstrated signs of stress and repetitive rocking movements.  He paralleled this with studies of children in orphanages who demonstrated the same rocking and concluded that not only separation from the mother, but the utter lack of movement led to brain lessions and other developmental problems in children.

I am more and more interested (for obvious reasons) in early childhood development and have been reading as much as life will let me.  I just recently I came across this article which also discusses the importance of carrying your baby:  The Second Nine Months. The argument is that human babies are born "early" out of necessity because of our big brains.  All other mammals are more mature at birth than human infants.  Even baby monkeys are capable of holding onto their mothers as they swing through trees within a matter of weeks (depending on the species, some mothers have to hold the babies for the first weeks of life).  In any case, there is no arguing that human babies are totally defenseless for much longer than any other baby animals and the reason, it seems, is all in our heads.

Baby monkeys are born with a brain approximately 50% the size of their adult brain.  Baby humans are born with just 25% of their eventual brain size.  What does that mean?  Inside the womb, a large ammount of energy is put into brain growth, but because our brains are so big and because we walk on two legs and therefore have more narrow pelvisis, babies humans must be born before they reach that 50% brain-size mark otherwise it would be impossible to birth them.  The article states then that a baby can be considered to be "mature" when she can crawl because at this stage she could escape from danger on her own.  Most babies begin to crawl around nine months (thus the title).  The article calls this period the period of "exterogestation" and emphasises the importnace of contact with the mother and being held and moved as in the womb.

Although Spaniards are in general very against holding your child (you're going to spoil her!), I have insisted on holding Emily every time she asks to be held and I "wear" her quite often, too.  When she was just newborn I was using as stretchy wrap, and now that she's a little bigger, I alternate with a carrier that my parents brought me from the States.  It makes sense to me.  And instinctively when a baby fusses, we want to pick her up and calm her.  We rock and bounce babies without even thinking about what we're doing; and as I mentioned in my last post, the hormonal changes in a mother make her loath to separate herself from her newborn infant.  It seems nature's got it all figured out... we just have to use our big brains to set aside cultural norms for a bit and listen to our hearts. 

Pretty proud of this: wearing and nursing at the same time in the mall in Málaga!