Look At Me Mommy

Undoubtedly, for many people the look of a baby is full of meaning. However, when a baby is premature the way it looks is something that you never really know about.

While it is true that the first experiences, in which the eyes of the baby and the parents meet, the baby only seeds him or herself, - remember that for your baby “his or her world” is him and his own needs -, it is not any less true that an important emotional exchange occurs between you both.

Have you ever let yourself be trapped by your baby’s look? if you haven’t, do so right away. It is an incomparable experience!

When our babies look at us it is impossible to not feel a strong interior feeling of emotion. 

Sometimes, despite what it means, the look of a child awakens in the parents their own hidden fears. I once heard a parent tell his child “I am not hurting you right?” or something common that a lot of mothers tell their babies before leaving the hospital is “I hope you can forgive me someday for leaving you here” and probably the most typical is “Don’t worry, it will all be over soon”, when actually the person you are saying to is yourself.

The only problem by doing this is that each time we pass on our fear to our babies we lose the opportunity to know what the babies true demands are. It is not rare to hear a lot of mothers and fathers insist to the nurses that their baby is cold or hungry because of the way the baby looked at them, although these are actually just interpretations the parents themselves make feeling responsible because they are separated from their babies.

Once the babies are home though, these readings can not only damage their natural communication, but cause the mother to cover the baby more because the mother is cold for example, stuff the baby with food thinking that the baby is going to lose weight which can then cause the baby to have to be taken back to the hospital, or try to put the baby to sleep when he or she is not tired etc.

What is true is that when your baby develops his or her visual capacity to the max, the baby will globally observe the expression on the face of the adult that is taking care of him or her to find out if this person is happy, worried, satisfied, or unsatisfied, which will cause the baby to smile, and which is an invitation to play or be hugged.

Keep in mind that for your baby, until he or she is seven or eight months – and during the first and second part of infancy – verbal language will not represent the only form of communication. For the baby, your gestures, attitudes and behavior will probably be the strongest source of information, just like now, in the first weeks of life, the baby is able to perceive how you are by:

• The tension in your arms when you hold him or her.
• The affective predisposition.
• The attitude you have when you hold him or her, such as if you are interested, close, distant etc.
• The tone and loudness of your voice.
• The coherence of your attitude when it comes to what you do or stop doing with the baby.