Mothers, Babies and their Body Language

Antonella Sansone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429916366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

This book emphasizes the importance of communication and early attachment for babies, acknowledging the value of both mother and father "being there" for their baby during pregnancy and after birth, with "quality time" to acknowledge, respect, and enjoy the presence of their baby.

Chapter One
Infant responses to parental contact

A baby’s toe is minuscule,
but the feeling of grounding from the mother’s touch
is enormous.

Parents’ sensory cues—movement, touch, smell, sounds, and body temperature—can have regulatory effects on their babies. This is well documented among non-human primates. Some babies who are born with more vulnerable physiological systems may need the physical contact with their parents in a more crucial way. For instance, there are data to suggest that babies can be born with a weaker respiratory system that might cease functioning during deep sleep (McKenna, 1990). On the basis of some interesting data, I conclude that there is an adaptive fit with parent–baby contact and their bodily cues (McKenna, 1986; Trevarthen, 2001b). The parents’ bodies, especially the mother’s, act as a regulator of the baby’s breathing, body temperature, and heart rate, particularly with premature and underweight babies.

The mother’s body is the first environment for the unborn and newborn baby. There are data to suggest that bodily contact between parent and baby may prevent rare conditions such as SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) or cot death, terms for a sudden and unanticipated infant death for which no cause has been identified. In the USA, two in one thousand infants die annually of SIDS and it remains the leading cause of non-accidental death for infants between the ages of one month and one year (Hoffman, Damus, Hillman & Krongrad, 1988). Interestingly, in Japan, where SIDS is quite unknown, babies usually sleep in the parents’ room because of the small size of the houses. Obviously, this does not mean that all babies sleeping in a separate room are at risk of SIDS. Nor does it mean that all babies who have died of this syndrome lacked physical contact with their parents. Such generalizations are unlikely to be helpful. Instead, reflecting on possible links can help with prevention. Some SIDS researchers believe that the functional deficit involved may be quite subtle and that infants who die of SIDS develop differences from healthy infants during intra-uterine life.

One study (Howard & Hannam, 2003) discussed the association between post-natal depression and SIDS. Post-natal depression is consistently found in 12–13 per cent of mothers and is associated with deficits in mother–infant interaction. It is possible that mothers with depression are less attuned to their infants’ cues and needs and are less able to respond appropriately to any changes in the infant. It is essential that these mothers and babies receive optimal care aimed at enhancing the mother’s ability to synchronize with her baby.

Epidemiological studies consistently show that while rates vary significantly, SIDS victims belong to a wide variety of populations. SIDS occurs within all industrial cultures and races, and in rich and poor families, (Valdes-Dapena, 1980; Peterson, 1983; Hoffman, Damus, Hillman & Krongrad, 1988). It affects infants with diverse clinical histories during every season (although especially in winter, when skin contact is obstructed by the clothes and the baby’s body temperature drops more easily) and at any time of day; while infants are in or out of the caregiver’s sight; while they are in cribs, in their parents’ bed and in car seats. Because of the multiple origin of SIDS, it would be impossible to control all the potential causes. What we can do is to improve the conditions in which infants develop before birth, as well as the environment in which they are nurtured and cared for after birth. This entails acknowledging the importance of the relationship that mother develops with her baby during pregnancy in shaping the intra-uterine environment and the baby’s development.

The mother’s imagination, mental representations of the baby, cultural beliefs, her motivation for giving birth, her expectations and self-esteem, her own previous intra-uterine life and way of being held are all elements that create the intra-uterine environment, as do hormones, bloodstream, diet, and so on. They contribute to shaping the infant’s development. Every physiological process, such as the mother’s muscle tone and posture, is mediated by her mental and emotional state and, in turn, these modulate physiological activities. Everything occurs in a circular feedback relationship. The complexity of the multiple interactions makes the mother–baby relationship subjective and unique. In this relationship, the father plays an important role through the contact with the mother and the support offered to her. There is no investigative access to this intimate and delicate relationship. A research project can study one or more factors and their correlation but they all interact with many others that are less apparent. Part of what is omitted is the whole subjective experience, the individual’s feelings and relationships. This private space comprising mother, father, and baby is often neglected by research, perhaps because of its inaccessible subjectivity and uniqueness. Sadly, it is also too often neglected by the majority of birth and child-care institutions. It is a space that needs to be acknowledged on many levels of the child-care and parental network.

Sleeping together

Data concerning parents’ and baby’s sensitivity to each other’s sensory cues and body language (Bowlby, 1969; McKenna, 1986; McKenna, 1990) indicate that sleeping in a separate room soon after birth may deprive babies of vital sensory cues that are more important for some than for others. This does not mean, of course, that if parents sleep with their children the risk of SIDS will be eliminated. Physical contact during sleep, which fosters tactile, vestibular, auditory, temperature, and carbon dioxide exchanges, induces infant alertness and thus helps to reduce what some researchers have called “adaptive failure” at a crucial time in the baby’s development. A baby needs a certain amount of carbon dioxide, which is one of the physiological stimulations for breathing. She has very sensitive receptors to carbon dioxide in her nasal mucus. Sharing her parents’ room is the best way to avoid carbon dioxide deprivation through their carbon dioxide exchanges. Another important stimulation is the parents’ touch and emitted sounds. Some babies may miss the sounds of the womb—the mother’s breathing, heart rate, digestive sounds, and so on—more intensely than others. Other babies may not miss them at all. The baby’s individual feelings and needs have to be acknowledged.

Three months before birth, sensory stimulation alone in the absence of blood gas exchanges (oxygen/carbon dioxide) initiates rhythmic breathing (amniotic or liquid breathing) in the foetus. The mother’s understanding of the infant’s need for a smooth transition into extra-uterine life may thus be significantly dependent on her capacity to interpret her bodily signals. The mother needs to be in touch with her own needs and body language, generated by the interaction with the baby. Her capacity to respond effectively, or her receptivity, requires a mutual understanding of codes.

An integrated view does not consider the baby in terms of how industrialized societies define it either biologically or socially but treats the baby’s social, psychological, and physiological needs as inseparable and interdependent. Parents tend to respond to their baby’s needs more according to cultural and lifestyle norms. However, a baby’s psychophysiological system seems to be more biologically conservative and less autonomous during the first six months of life. Physical contact, by inducing sensory stimulation, acts as a synchronizer that promotes the stability of the baby’s breathing. Baby massage can act as a powerful regulator of the baby’s respiratory system because of the richness of the mother– baby sensory exchanges that it entails. This can protect her from environmental disturbances, particularly during the first six months of life. Laying the baby on her stomach and massaging her back triggers the reflex, when she has achieved this developmental stage, to lift her head and chest off the floor. This strengthens the back muscles and expands the ribcage and chest. As her chest opens, she takes in more oxygen to fight disease and assist development. But, more importantly, she is training to assume a postural attitude from which respiratory development will certainly benefit. It is important to do this for short, regular periods, as it reverses the foetal position to which babies are confined in the womb. On the subject of cot death, Peter Walker (1995), who pioneered baby massage in Britain, pointed out that putting babies on their stomach for massage was different from putting them in that position to sleep.

During the first few weeks of life, the newborn seems to have a natural immunity to cot death, possibly because of a “gasping reflex” that promotes oxygenation during periods of asphyxia. Breathing is still completely under the control of the primitive areas of the brain. Afterwards, however, the infant loses this reflex and becomes more vulnerable to breathing (apnoeas or periodic breathing). The baby’s breathing can benefit from a regulatory entity such as a human body. This also applies to adult breathing. During contact, vibrations are passed on, synchronizing breathing. There are creative activities that maintain the baby’s arousal and so stabilize her breathing, such as playing music or an instrument, or simply singing to the baby. These can be far more effective if the mother used to do them during pregnancy. These activities emit vibrations, which are not just auditory but proprioceptive; they amplify the effects on the baby’s skin and muscular system, acting as regulators. Furthermore, they can mediate between mother and baby, facilitating their interactions. However, after nine months in the womb, no regulator is more powerful for the newborn baby than the mother’s body. There is much research and observation to show the different ways in which parents and infants affect each other physiologically, socially, and psychologically (Shore, 1994; Feldman, Greenbaum & Yirmiya, 1999; Trevarthen, 1999). I have found significant support in this for my observational study (Sansone, 2002).

Movement and breathing

The effects of rhythmic rocking and movement on the human infant have been recognized since prehistoric times. Rocking stimulation can soothe as well as alert the baby, because of its effects on the reticular activating system (a substance linking the brain with the spine marrow). When babies cry, they are often asking to be rocked. They often stop crying when their mother begins to walk around and rock them. There is a position that Peter Walker (1995) calls the “tiger position”, which seems to have amazing effects on most babies. Mother lays the baby stomach-down on her left arm (if she is right-handed), cradles her head and neck in the crook of her left arm, and lets her wrap her arms and legs around her arms, facing outwards. I have tried this position with several babies and taught it to mothers and, more often than not, it calms babies down. This position combines rocking stimulation with simultaneous gentle massage of the baby’s stomach, which amplifies the soothing effect. The mother in motion produces a swinging pelvic movement that reproduces the familiar wave motion of the womb. The mother’s breathing can also be reassuring for the baby, as it is likely to evoke that well-known rhythm sensed during intra-uterine life. The rhythmic movement and breathing sounds provided by the parent’s chest movement, when the infant is held, particularly when parents and infant sleep together, can also benefit the infant’s breathing.

During sleep, the infant feels the disruptive sleep movements and activities, which produce a feeling similar to that when she was sleeping or floating in the womb, providing her with a sense of security. Breathing is also dependent on body temperature, which in close physical contact is maintained by the mother’s body. A preliminary study succeeded in stabilizing the breathing activity of some high-risk premature infants by placing mechanically breathing teddy bears in their cribs, which resembled the parents’ chest movements (Thoman & Graham, 1986). The synchronized relationship between the mother’s rhythms and the baby’s breathing seems to represent an important transition from intra-uterine life for the baby.

The foetus’s respiratory nuclei, located on the brain stem, develop structurally and functionally very early. The baby’s breathing in the womb is connected with that of the mother. By six months of gestation, the vestibular system is well advanced. The infant’s motor skills begin to develop before birth in relation to the movement produced by the mother’s body. Thus, babies develop an interactive synchronization conforming to the mother’s uterine biorhythms. This does not mean that the baby is asleep whenever the mother is sleeping. A baby also has autonomous behaviours. However, she lives in an environment in which stimuli such as hormones, temperature, bloodstream, water, sounds, mood swings, and so on contribute to moulding her responses and behaviours. Mutual synchronization of physiological rhythms is a fundamental process that mediates attachment or bond formation (Shore, 1994; Shore 2000 a, 2000b).

Touch and physiological changes

Touch affects breathing and is crucial for healthy development. By stimulating the skin, touch promotes a balanced distribution of muscle tone. It has effects on the hormonal and immune systems. Since emotional tension such as anger or fear displays itself through muscular tension, touch can prevent anger from building inside. Any sound in the womb, because it vibrates, is not just heard by the baby (her auditory system is well developed by six months) but it penetrates her skin and muscles, inducing or stopping her movements. Fully orchestrated, with a rhythmic heart “boom”, a percussive pounding of blood and incidental stomach rumblings, the womb is far from silent. The pre-natal baby’s brain starts to interpret sensory patterns at around six months and can detect a change in tempo. Core awareness does exist in the pre-natal baby.

Unborn babies can be extremely skilful in sensing the impulse of a song in their body; they can even determine the rhythms of their mother’s body. This explains the newborn baby’s amazing capacity to respond to, as well as determine, the rhythms and melodies of her mother’s voice or a piece of music, just like a dancer, and suggests that the baby is born with a pre-formed system in her brain that can create a musical or rhythmic body.

Sound is therefore equivalent to touch. The feeling of being massaged originates in the womb, where the baby is massaged by the mother’s or the father’s voice, even by others’ voices, by sounds surrounding the mother, the amniotic fluid, and the rocking from the mother’s pelvis in motion, her breathing, and heart rate. Research shows that the foetal heartbeat and movements increase in response to sounds (Olds, 1986; Hepper, 1991; Lecanuet, Granier-Deferre, Jacquet & DeCasper, 2000). The foetus has specific preferences as to sounds, which can either please or disturb her and affect her heart rate and motor patterns. This means that melodic sounds and any tune enjoyed by the mother can act as a regulator of the baby’s physiology and promote healthy development. Research shows that infants born to mothers with low heart rates sleep for longer periods, fall asleep faster, and cry less than infants born to mothers with higher heart rates (McKenna, 1986). I should re-emphasize the importance of considering research cautiously and avoiding generalizations. Evidence helps to understand a possible link, something that is likely to occur and is only a part of a more complex puzzle. Hypotheses and results may restrict the understanding of the whole phenomenon; nevertheless, they can be helpful in finding some important links. Consistently with the relationship between the foetal heartbeat and movements and sounds, Rubbing an infant’s feet for about five minutes can reduce the duration and frequency of apnoeas. This helps to explain the full range of effects of massage on the baby’s breathing.

What is termed “genetic” at birth is actually already environmental, as the mother’s body is an environment for the baby and is itself affected by the mother’s environment. A multitude of environmental factors, as well as the relationship that parents build with their baby through their own attitudes and expectations, and the baby’s own activities shape the baby’s personality in the womb. In regard to this, the following is an anecdote from my intra-uterine life, reported by my mother. She told me once that during her late pregnancy she often enjoyed lying on her stomach and feeling my kicking. I was surprised, as this is reported to be a fairly uncomfortable position for the majority of women in late pregnancy. For my mother, my kicking may have been a sign of liveliness, but for me perhaps it was a reaction to the pressure on my vital space. I also know that her labour was relatively short and that my black hairy head appeared unexpectedly when my father, who eventually almost delivered me, was in the room without the midwife present. If I look at my adolescent relationship with her, I see a possible link between that pre-natal behavioural pattern and my reactions to a possessive streak in her.

A further example of how during our pre-natal life we absorb attitudes, gestures, talents, and behavioural patterns through a form of mysterious non-verbal communication with our mother is the case of a one-year-old girl. She had just begun to walk, when I saw her taking her first steps on tiptoes and displaying a remarkable dance pose. Her mother said that she had first noticed this at home a few days earlier and had been amazed, since the child had never seen her dancing. Surprisingly enough, the mother had been a dancer. The complex amalgam of genetic and environmental factors makes the primary period of our life, including the pre-natal stage, the most fascinating phenomenon.

Separation

To understand the psychological effects of separation from the mother on her infant, it is important to know the physiological effects, as they are closely related. If we bear in mind how the mother acts through physical contact to regulate the baby’s temperature, metabolism, hormone levels, enzyme production, antibody production, sleep cycle, heart rate, and breathing, we can envisage the impairment that can be induced by premature separation. Early separation from the mother may cause the infant to produce stress hormones (such as cortisone), which cause a drop in her body temperature. We can imagine the damage that can be caused to a pre-term baby who is whisked away from the mother to special care and will not see or feel the mother for hours and sometimes days on end. Studies on the macaque monkey (Reite & Field, 1985; McKenna, 1986) indicate that, when separated from their mothers, primates as old as four to six months also undergo a reduction of body temperature and can have disturbances in sleep, with decreased rapid-eye-movement sleep periods, changes in electroencephalogram activity, alteration in cellular immune responses and increases in cardiac arrhythmia and adrenal (stress hormone) secretion and cortisone levels. When parents abuse infants by depriving them of bodily contact, babies can gradually lose weight even though they are being fed. Food intake alone is not enough to guarantee normal weight when there is no loving physical contact.

Research shows that mother’s heartbeat soothes th...