A newborn’s highly developed sense of smell
That tiny button nose in the middle of that angelic little face is far more skilled than you might imagine. Babies are able to smell before they can even breathe.
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As babies develop, other more complex senses take over and improve their perception of the world around them, but smells will always be linked to intuition and emotions. So give your baby’s sense of smell all the attention it deserves!
A newborn’s nose
Your baby may be fast asleep but if you place a sheet of paper or tissue sprayed with perfume under his nose, you will see his little nostrils move ever so slightly. Babies have a highly developed sense of smell and while other senses are dulled when sleeping, smell is not one of them.
Newborns less than 12 hours old have been studied by placing different odours under their noses: neutral (distilled water), supposedly pleasant scents (vanilla, banana, chocolate, honey, etc.) and odours considered obnoxious (rotten egg or fish, etc.). Photos were taken at each experiment and the babies were seen to have a pleasurable reaction to pleasant odours and retreat when smelling the fetid odours.
Contrary to adults however, the babies expressed no particular aversion to the smell of sweat. These experiments led by a group of North American researchers at the School of T. Engen and L.P. Lipsitt, confirm that newborn have a developed sense of smell and that there exists an innate emotional relationship between babies and odours. All this even before their first mouthful of food!
Smelling and tasting in the womb
As the foetus develops, some organs appear very early on. When a baby is born, senses such as taste and smell are already set to discover the world. Ultrasound scans show that a foetus can swallow liquid or suck as early as the 5th month. The foetus can already smell - nasal cavities develop as early as the 2nd month. You could ask yourself though, what is baby supposed to be smelling?
A baby swallows approximately half a litre of the amniotic fluid in its mother’s womb each day. Once “digested”, this fluid is passed to the bloodstream and then, through the umbilical cord, to the mother’s bloodstream to be eliminated by her kidneys. Amniotic fluid is constantly renewed – approximately a third each day – through the mother’s blood. And every mother’s blood has an odour too. Some foods contain aromas which pass into the blood and a pregnant women's amniotic fluid - like her breast milk will do - take on these odours. That’s how a baby discovers the flavours of foods even before seeing what they look like.
In this way, a baby tastes everything her mother eats during the pregnancy and more or less sharpens her sense of smell, remembering (which doesn't necessarily mean she’ll like them) stronger smelling foods such as garlic, cabbage, asparagus or spices like curry, cumin and aniseed.
Sniffing out mummy
When the umbilical cord that joins mother and baby is cut at birth, the newborn is no longer connected to his sole food source. However, he has developed his sense of smell, knows how to suck and how to swallow. If you place the baby on his mother’s chest during the first few hours after birth (a time when innate reflexes are extremely strong) he will seek out his mother’s breast. Guided by the smell of milk, he will instinctively seek out the breast and latch on: the baby recognises his mother and will "root" for milk at each feed.
Within just a few days, the newborn will be able to recognise some of her mother's other odours: perspiration, skin and hair... She will also know the difference between her mother’s milk and another woman's. In fact the mother's body becomes a kind of "odour map" which stimulates the baby's sense of smell and promotes recognition and attachment to the mother.
A baby also learns other smells as he goes from his mother to his father. He learns to distinguish the way our body odour varies depending on the time of day, food, heat and emotions...
If a baby is bottle fed, she doesn’t have the chance to experience this abundance of smell and taste experiences: infant formula and a bottle teat always have the same smell. A bottle-fed baby needs more skin-on-skin contact to both awaken her senses and give her comfort.
Copyright © 2010 Doctissimo
Posted 21.12.2010
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