by L. Janel Martin-Miranda, MA c2005
What every baby needs in the earliest BRAIN development - from conception throughout pregnancy, birth, and beyond - in order to live his or her highest potential is:
- To be wanted and welcomed at conception by two loving adults who are physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially prepared to be parents
- To have complete nutrition and a toxin-free womb in order to build a healthy, fully functioning brain and body
- To feel safe and protected by parents, and without stress throughout pregnancy and birth
- To be connected with and nurtured by parents throughout pregnancy, at birth, and beyond
- To have his or her own biologically programmed impulse and timing for birth while in continued relationship with the mother and safety of the father
- To complete the biologically programmed “self-attachment” sequence of coming to the breast in his or her own timing – resting in the arms of the mother and father, without interventions
It's the baby's birth. Birth is the baby's experience of coming into this world. It is not just the mother's. It is not the doctor's so why is malpractice and control of the process allowed in this society? Obstetric, pediatric, nursing, psychology, and midwifery training do not involve teaching the effects of the earliest experience of the human brain.
Clearly, a baby needs to be conceived, gestated, and born into a world that is welcoming, safe, nuturing, and loving - rather than being unwanted, violent, abandoned, and poorly nourished. This is not only logical but scientifically based. A baby needs a drug-free, peaceful birth in connection with his or her mother. Because it matters. In the brain. Pun intended.
The newborn baby's brain has more than a billion neurons and each one is experiencing the labor and birth experience and the new world. Everyone present during labor and birth, everything said and done by them is imprinted in each of these billion cells. It creates the first perception of the world. Imprinting of maternal experience has been happening in the developing baby's system since conception. Science tells us that the gestating baby's body and brain is fully formed by the end of the first trimester. From conception forward the baby, as every living organism, is developing and surviving in struggle between growth or protection. Of course, from conception forward, the baby is growing, developing, and learning. Science tells us that babies are highly sensory. For example, they hear and interact with the outside womb, especially in the last trimester.
Our medical, religious, psychological and educational systems need to acknowledge, teach, and address the primal development period – and the effects what we do and say on the needs in the fetus, birthing baby, growing infant and child, in the teenager or adult, and in their intimate relationships. We logically know we can affect another, such as a child, but we must begin to recognize how we can affect a gestating and laboring baby as well.
Our highest potential is unrecognized – 90% of people born in the United States were born under the influence of drugs and with violent experiences and touch (induced, forceps, rough handling during and after birth, separation from the mother, etc.) I am asking you expand your thinking to also consider how we treat conception, pregnancy, and what we are doing to babies during labor and birth and the first hours and days of life. No other period of time is so critical as the pre-conception through infancy period of life.
2 comments:
Janel,
Thank you for this post. I am currently starting a corporation here in Illinois called Gentle Begining, Inc. As I start out I will be focusing on Childbirth Education and Doula Services. Ideally I would like to be so much more...eventually Non-Profit and country/worldwide. I have been trying to rally support for the very thing you're writing about here. I believe life to be a circle, and anytime the circle gets broken a person goes off on a tangent. I also believe if we took care of our pregnant moms and their offspring we could almost completely alleviate the need for prisons and drug rehab in this country (just two examples). I am an Early Childhood Specialist and a college professor (ECE and Elementary Ed) and it baffles me how Early Childhood Development seemingly ignores preconception through birth as important times in the development of a child.
I wonder if we can work together in some way??
Hi, Tricia -- you have my email, right? Please email me.
Yes, it is so amazing to me how our society ignores conception and labor and birth as important -- as much as gestation. Addiction theories, studies, and treatment do not even consider the use of drugs at birth, especially narcotics. ?!??! Do you know of the Infant Parent Institute in Champaign, IL? www.infant-parent.com. The Ex Director, Michael Trout, is a an infant mental health person and a great guy. Also a memeber of APPPAH, www.birthpsychology.com.
You mention the CIRCLE breaking down --- SO INTERESTING that we do look at the birthing process as circular process. The BABY starts labor by sending a hormonal signal to the mother's body to begin labor. The baby and mother need to work in connection throughout labor -- baby's feet with mother's uterus. The baby is the PILOT and needs to have her biological impulse throughout the labor. Drugs and interventions, and people interrupt this. Baby needs to complete the CIRCLE at birth by having completing the self-attachment process --- crawling, with support to the mother's breast. Whereever we have breaks in that circle is where we have what you call tangents.
Thanks for the post! Email me.
ljm
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