Time
Glancing at my clock, I realised it was lunch time and I would need to prepare something to eat and then begin the myriad of other activities that needed to be done. All these activities governed by time. I could feel the stress building. Would there be enough time to do everything? I’m sure most of us have experience situations like this in our everyday life.
Remember back in your childhood when you where running around and playing, nothing else mattered except what you where doing in that moment. Maybe the light started to fade and you were called inside by your parents for a meal. Time had little relevance to you then.
Or remember those precious times you experienced being away on holidays. You woke up when your body had had enough sleep and you felt refreshed. You ate food when you felt hungry, and you decided what activities you wanted to do in the moment. It was a feeling of freedom and exhilaration. Getting back to “normal” life may have been a rude awakening with alarms, schedules and commitments.
Bringing your baby into the world can be a wonderful time to experience this living in the moment again. On baby’s arrival day your own body’s natural rhythms lets you know that today things are different. If all well, in their own time, mum and baby meet for the first time. Your baby snuggles up to you and their own natural rhythms allows them to crawl and wriggle up to reach for the breast and attend to their instinct to feed. There is no hurry, we are on baby’s time.
As the days go by, watching for your baby’s feeding cues will determine when they are hungry. Just like us adults when we are eating on a time schedule rather than listening to our body to determine if we are hungry, problems of excess can occur. This puts our digestive system under stress, showing up as pain, wind or general discomfort.
A well baby who is strong and vigorous, knows what to do.
Use your imagination in this following exercise:
Place yourself in a village somewhere in the middle of no-where. There are no phones clocks or watches. Would you know how to feed and care for your baby in this situation?
A: You would follow your baby’s cues and their natural instincts to feed. As a new Mum, with many hormonal changes taking place in your body, your instincts to love, protect and care for your baby are very powerful.
My next blog will be - Is my baby getting enough?
