Mother love and instincts
Most mothers are exhilarated, although exhausted, after the delivery of a baby and feel great love for the child. Some mothers, however, find they feel nothing at first.
© Jupiter
We now know that mother love, put very simply, is a response to hormones. There are certain hormones produced in the brain almost immediately after delivery, namely oxytocin or prolactin, which trigger lactation and are also responsible for maternal feelings. Different women have different emotional responses to these hormones and may find that their love for their babies takes longer to develop.
A mother's feelings for her baby can also be affected by other factors, like the actual delivery and her own expectations of the birth and the baby. It's not uncommon for the baby's arrival to be something of an anti-climax. Even if it is short and perfectly normal, labour is a very dramatic event and it is a hard act to follow.
Conversely, if the labour has been very hard and long, and if drugs have been used, the mother may be too exhausted and numbed to feel great love for her child. Also, she may have unrealistic expectations of her response to her newborn baby. She may, for instance, expect to recognize him instantly as her own flesh and blood, and to look physically similar to herself and her partner. In fact, this is rarely the case and so it's important to be aware of it.
Most women, however, find that their love grows gradually over the 48 or 72 hours after their babies' births until on the third day they feel a palpable love for their new babies. But don't be surprised if it takes two weeks or more.
Motherly love and your baby
A mother's response to her baby can be affected by the amount of time she spends with him during the first few days of life. In one study on this, a group of mothers were permitted only routine contact with their babies on a hospital ward. Another group of mothers in the same ward was allowed to have contact with their babies for an extra 15 hours during their three days in hospital. The two groups were interviewed one month after delivery and a year later and revealed a number of quite surprising differences. The mothers who had been given extended contact were found to be more reluctant to leave their babies, to be more responsive to their crying, to engage in more eye-to-eye contact during feeding and to be generally more attentive. The remarkable thing is that these differences are accounted for by just 15 hours of additional contact during the first three days of life.
While it's undoubtedly true that early physical contact helps bonding, it's not the only factor involved in the development of maternal or paternal feelings. In a study of premature babies, where the most extreme form of early separation arises because the baby has to stay in an incubator for an extended period, mothers were allocated to two groups. In the first, the standard hospital procedure was used and each mother was permitted only to look at her baby during the several weeks he stayed in the incubator. In the second group the mothers were permitted to handle their babies in the incubator from the second day onwards.
Both groups of mothers were questioned after one week and one month and then after discharge from hospital. It was impossible to find any consistent differences between the two groups. This important piece of research suggests that a mother's attachment to her baby may not be seriously affected by a temporary separation immediately after her baby's birth. That's just as well, otherwise there would be little hope for adoptive parents and their children.
Mothering instincts
Mothering is much more complex than a simple dependency on the hormonal changes that occur at childbirth. The most likely explanation for the way a woman develops mothering instincts is that they stem from the mother's own childhood. Love develops early on in life on a reciprocal basis. It stems from the experience of being loved by parents who give a child the capacity for loving others. It enables the child to return love when it is given and to transfer it to others later on in life. In other words, when a child is loved it makes him fit for love; if a child is deprived of this experience the ability to love is stunted. This is why it's so important for your child to have your loving attention, care and concern.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 30.06.2010
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