Since your baby has been born, I’m sure you’ve felt his or her fingers wrap on yours while they are nursing. You’ve lovingly stroked a finger down their silky cheek. The love you feel begins to swell to greater proportions as you gaze at them and expands to fill the whole of your being when you lift that precious baby into your arms. You feel like you will burst from the pride, the love and the admiration that fills you.
You stroke their head, you almost can’t help yourself, and you reach out to touch them even when they are asleep. You may not even realize how often and how much you touch your baby and how you miss them when you are away – even for just a few hours – and how eager you are to touch them and reaffirm for you that they are there and that you can.
Touch is Vital To Your Baby & Yourself
Touching is a primal response that parents have where their young are concerned. It starts for most of us when we are pregnant. We rub our bellies and others want to rub them too. We want to touch that new life as it is forming and developing – we crave it. We can’t stop ourselves from wanting to and we shouldn’t.
As your baby grows older, you cradle them in your arms, you rub their backs, you bounce them on your knee and you play with their tiny fingers and their tiny toes. When they are upset and troubled in their sleeping patterns, often a warm and comforting touch along their back can settle them almost immediately.
Touch is important to our bonding with our child. Touch releases endorphins in the brain that are powerful and even more powerful than narcotics available for elevating the mood. Touch triggers memories, both emotional and intellectual. You not only remember the facts of the moment, but you remember the love and the joy in the moment. This memory is reinforced every single time you touch your baby. It doesn’t change as they get older – even now when my daughter who is six reaches out to take my hand – I remember the first time her tiny fingers wrapped around one of my fingers.
We Communicate Through Touch
We communicate a wealth of emotion through touch. We convey affection and comfort in our hugs. We convey support with a squeeze on the shoulder or a gentle hand on the back. We convey love and friendship with a kiss and through holding hands. This is part of why when our babies are very young, just holding them is often more than enough to soothe them and this is why the baby snuggly or sling is so great for babies – they want to be touched, they spent nine months of development in your womb, being touched on all sides by your body – that touch continues to give them great comfort after they are born and the need to be touched doesn’t go away as we get older – after all, we’re the ones reaching out to touch our little ones.
How do you feel when you stroke your baby’s cheek?
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