I marvel at the capability of the newborn who is anything but helpless!

• The baby has to cope with change from a dark, warm, tightly held, gentle and quiet environment out into the wide world of bright lights and strange antiseptic smells, and loud noises of a hospital ward(a home birth is a much more gentle environment!)
• Of watching the incredible capacity of the newborn who smells the colostrum and crawls his own way to latch onto the breast himself
• I also marvel at how AWARE the newborn is, even in the midst of all of their adaptations to the outside world when their lungs have to learn to breathe for the first time,The blood has to change direction from umbilical cord to heart and round the body, to now go to the heart and then lungs, back to the heart and around the body.
• The contentment of watching the open-mouthed, quiet bliss of a baby full of breastmilk falling asleep in her mother’s arms
• That their faces and hands and body movements are communicating their needs so well, if we would only read our own babies and trust our parenting, and put aside the books and “experts”

What have the babies taught me?

That newborns are “Fearfully and wonderfully made”! They are surprisingly competent, wonderful and sometimes exhausting! Hang in there Mums and Dads for those first busy weeks!