28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Affect of a Nurturing Environment on Babies
If survival is the brain’s most important priority, safety is the most important expression of that priority. This is the lesson Harlow’s iron maidens teach us. Babies are completely at the mercy of the people who brought them into the world. This understanding has a behavioral blast radius in infants that obscures every other behavioral priority they have.
How do babies handle these concerns? By attempting to establish a productive relationship with the local power structures—you, in ...
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1 Babies that have their needs met grow up to be regular children, babies that are neglected, even in just the first four months, grow up to be gang members.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Importance of the Mother-Infant Bond
In the 1960s a slow revolution in birthing practices began in Western culture. As a result of the influence of John Bowlby's attachment theory and Harry Harlow's infant monkey experiments, the medical establishment realized the importance of physical proximity on the bonding process and babies were not necessarily removed to the nursery. The feminist movement in the 1970s, which helped women assert their wishes, furthered that revolution as it gave female nurses and mothers the support to dem...Mothers separated from their babies are more likely to abuse them, while bonded infants are more responsive.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Physiological Effects of Cosleeping with Infants
when they are more used to sleeping alone, sleep differently when with when they are more used to sleeping alone, sleep differently when with their mothers. The babies seem to spend a greater percentage of their sleep time in levels 1-2 and less time at the deeper levels, exhibit more REM sleep, and are awake longer. In other words, they are more often moving among sleep levels, and they sleep lighter.
Christopher Richard, Mosko, and McKenna have also found that most co-sleeping pairs spend ...How cosleeping effects an infant's progression through sleep, with the mother guiding it through the cycles.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Shortening a Baby's Crying Duration
What seems to work best is simple human contact. Peter Wolff long ago demonstrated that picking up a baby works better than anything else to stop any baby from crying. In another study, infant researchers BeU and Ainsworth showed in the 1970s, with a sample of twenty-six infants, that consistent and prompt response by the infant's mother is associated with a decrease in the duration of infant crying. Urs Hunziker and Ronald Barr recently took this idea even further when they experimented with...Nothing works better than carrying the baby and responding quickly to its needs.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Objections to Cosleeping with Infants
The fear of overlaying haunts many parents in Western culture today. Most believe it is possible to roll over and squish a baby or suffocate it under a mound of blankets. But as infant sleep researcher McKenna notes, babies are born with strong survival reflexes, and they will kick and scream before they let anything clog their airways. The simple evidence that most babies around the world today sleep with a parent and they are not dying from suffocation should be enough to convince parents t... 1 
notes
notesThe fear of overlaying and religious objections to parents cosleeping with their babies.
