JOURNAL - International Childbirth Education Association

RECIPROCAL INTERACTIONS AS FOUNDATION FOR ATTACHMENT from page 7
to every new family. Frequently, newborn crying is due
to feeling alone. Swaddling and placing the baby in bed
with mother or father often results in everyone getting
some rest. For parents, the message is, “I am important
to this baby. I am what the baby needs.” This is both the
joy and burden of parenting. Realizing that parenting is
about presence is crucial in the development of healthy
families.
When caring for parents and babies together, skilled
staff can help parents see that crying is often a last step
in a baby’s communication process rather than the baby’s
sole way of communicating. Together, parent and professional
can watch for the subtler messages that every
newborn offers as a sign help is needed. Messages may
include a change in state of consciousness, averting visual
attention as a sign a break is needed, raising a hand in
front of the face as a way of showing that the interaction
is overwhelming, efforts to establish eye contact as a way
to initiate conversation, and rooting or batting the face
with the hands as evidence of hunger. In the old model
of rooming-in where parents assumed full responsibility
for the care of the baby, this kind of learning occurred by
chance — if at all — rather than by practice. When parents
and babies are cared for together, teaching flows naturally
from moments when the nurse is caring for the baby, the
parent, or both rather than being driven by checklists
that seem unrelated to competencies a parent actually
needs.
Finally, in a family-centered environment, visitors are
present at the wishes of the parents and are educated
about their role in getting this family off to a good start.
Staff recognize that the health care system has limited
resources and limited time with new parents, but know
families that thrive have quality social support. Built into
practice, then, is a valuing of those who come to celebrate
the addition of a new member of the community.
Basic to our hopes for babies and parents is that
they form relationships that sustain them throughout life.
Healthy relationships form when there is mutually satisfying
reciprocal interaction. That is true of parents and babies,
parents and the staff who care for them, and parents and
institutions in which every new family is treated as the
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community’s greatest natural resource.
References
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Brazelton, T. B. and B. G. Cramer. 1990. The earliest relationship: Parents,
infants and the drama of early attachment. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, Inc.
Comparretti, M. 1981. The neurophysiologic and clinical implications
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(2): 183-189.
Cole, M. and S. R. Cole. 1993. The development of children. 2nd ed.
New York: Scientific American Books.
DeCasper, A. J. and M. J. Spence. 1986. Prenatal maternal speech inferences
newborns perception of speech sounds. Infant Behavior and
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Lipsitt, L. P. 1977. “Taste in human neonates: Its effects on sucking
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Lorenz, K. 1943. Die Angebornen Formen mogicher Erfahrung. Zeitschrift
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Patten, B. M. 1968. Human embryology. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-
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Porter, R. H., J. M. Cernoch, and F. J. McLaughlin. 1983. Maternal
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Rosenstein, D., and H. Oster. 1988. Differential facial responses to four
basic tastes in newborns. Child Development 59: 1555-1568.
Stern, D. 1977. The first relationship: Infant and mother. Cambridge:
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Varendi, V. H., K. Christensson, R. H. Porter, and J. Winberg. 1998.
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Varendi, V. H., R. H. Porter, and J. Winberg. 1997. Natural
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Acta Paediatr 86, no. 9: 985-990.
■ Linda Todd, BA, MPH, ICCE, is the author of You and Your
Newborn Baby: A Guide to the First Months After Birth, as
well as ICEA’s publication, Labor and Birth: A Guide for You.
She is currently a Consultant and Coordinator of Educational
Services for Phillips+Fenwick, a California-based women’s health
services consulting firm.
8 • IJCE Vol. 13 No. 4