Bonded Birth - A toolkit2/4/2023 The infant-to-parent bond is one of the strongest bonds we see in life. It helps shape emotional regulation, sleep, mental health, and even more for both parents and babies. Often times we see parenting courses skim over this very important part of parenting. In this resource we will cover: - How we know babies are conscious - Exercises for exploring consciousness with your baby - Bonding through pregnancy - Bonding through labor and birth - Bonding throughout the first year postpartum - Bonding for non-gestational parents The DNA selection for an embryo is impacted up to three months prior to conception. Healing our trauma prior to conception is a great step to ending generational trauma. The DNA selection for an embryo is impacted up to three months before conception. Imagine how greatly it is also impacted in pregnancy!
  Developmental Milestones and Opportunities for Connection:Tactile sensitivity begins in the seventh week of gestation and steadily enlarges to include most parts of the body by seventeen weeks and all parts by thirty-two weeks. There are many ways to see a physical reaction and know for yourself that your baby is responding. Talk to your baby! Hearing may begin early in the first trimester or as late as eighteen weeks. Speaking to your baby is a great way to begin bonding. Your baby will begin recognizing your voice specifically. This is a great way to check in with your baby about the emotions you are experiencing. Stress is a normal part of life, but telling your baby what is happening and why can reduce the impacts of stress long term. Interact with your baby! The fetus is aware of light even while the eyelids are still fused and will react to lights flashed on the abdomen. You can try playing with a flashlight on your abdomen, moving your hands along your abdomen and following baby as they follow the light. You can also try interacting through noise such as music. You may find your baby prefers Taylor Swift over Beethoven or vice versa! Dreaming Premature babies dream more than anybody else! They show the most smiles, frowns, finger movements, neck stretches, mouth movements, and vocalizations in their dreams. Ultrasound has shown that the beginning of REM/dreaming activity is at just twenty-three weeks! Medical Interventions Babies in the womb react to medical interventions with accelerated heart activity, turning, or moving away. This can be seen when a fetus moves away from the ultrasound probe or bats it away. Many parents who notice this will opt out of ultrasound and testing that could be disruptive to their baby, but others may choose to talk to the baby throughout the procedure; to let them know what is happening and why. Your baby is connected with you and is experiencing your emotions on an even deeper level. While it can be important and effective to reduce stress and keep a positive mindset it can also be important to discuss feelings and experiences directly with your baby. This not only teaches emotional regulation, but also offers more bonding opportunities.
Karen Strange's 4 Ways to Communicate with Baby 1. Tell your baby what you are going to do BEFORE you do it 2. Tell your baby what is going on 3. Tell your baby what you want them to do 4. Tell your baby the story of what happened
 Reduce mother and baby separation. The first hour postpartum is when skin to skin is the most important, and especially throughout the first 24 hours. Many policies and procedures are in place for hospital financial gain and efficiency. You have consent and you can say no to something. You can also request that routine procedures be done on you! If baby needs to be measured, temperature checked, etc those tasks can be done with baby on your abdomen with minor adjustments from staff. Bonded Birth Goals:
Birth Plan Considerations for a Bonded Birth:Remember, the best birthing experience is one where you are making choices that are right for you and your family. Pain medication and the breast crawl are two important parts of a birthing plan that may not be thought about when it comes to birth psychology. They should be considered! 1. Pain Meds: Pitocin, the synthetic form of Oxytocin commonly used to induce labor, uses all the oxytocin receptor sites. Oxytocin breaks the blood/brain barrier and offers relief, but Pitocin does not. Oxytocin is commonly referred to as the love or cuddle hormone. It is released in the highest doses during orgasm, childbirth, and breastfeeding. It is essential for bonding and should remain flowing through labor and immediately postpartum. It can reduce risk of PMADs (perinatal mood and anxiety disorders) and prevent hemorrhaging. The endorphins naturally released throughout labor reduce pain in birthing parent and in baby, and encourage bonding! Pain medication may prevent baby or birthing parent from being an active member in the birth, prevent endorphin release, delay milk/lactogenesis, relaxed pelvic floor making it harder for baby to rotate, impact on heartrate, and impact on head molding which impacts ability to suck and swallow. 2. Breast Crawl: Breast crawl is the instinctive movement of a newborn mammal toward the nipple of its mother for the purpose of latching on to initiate breastfeeding. This movement uses the following reflexes: Babinski, Spinal Galant, Spinal Perez, amphibian, ATNR, and the Bauer crawl. 
PAUSE: This is not just the golden hour where bonding between parent and baby is the priority, this is the moment after a busy period where the entire family can take a moment to process and take it all in. The story will be different for the birth person, parents, and for baby. •Routine procedures can wait! Emergency procedures are best done on the birthing parent with the cord attached whenever possible. (Raylene Phillips, Neonatologist, Loma Linda Medical Center, CA, USA) "When space is created to help the whole family’s experience be seen, heard, and felt, a new story of what happened can be experienced through connection." - Rebecca Thompson Hitt, MS, MFT Keep your baby with you. This is the period of trust versus mistrust, according to Erikson's. This is the period where baby really needs to be with their parents. It is important to not allow excessive crying during this period. A great method of keeping baby close and crying minimal is babywearing. There are studies called Why African Babies Don't Cry that explore the story of babywearing in African villages and how it allows babies to nurse on demand and constantly have the comfort of their parent. EFT Tapping: Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping is a great emotional regulation tool to teach infants and a great communication tool from parents to infants. It can be great to remind your baby that things are okay when you are feeling emotional. It can also be a great way to signal it is bedtime. Try incorporating this in your nightly routine around the time that you are changing your baby's diaper. Do some tapping just before bed and a foot massage, easy to offer while already lying down on the changing table. Both are great bonding exercises that touch reflexology points. Speak to your baby and hold healthy eye contact: Your baby communicates through the universal language of emotion. Our eyes hold much emotion. They are a way we recognize each other and a way that we show we are listening fully. When speaking with your baby practice holding eye contact. You can look them in the eyes and blink until they begin blinking in sync with you, a bonding exercise! Skin to skin, anytime! Skin to skin is not just important during immediate postpartum. It should be done well into the weeks following, between both parents. It is a great way too bond and should even be done during bottle feeds. During bottle feeds remember to alternate which side you are feeding on, the same way you would with the breast. Family Focused Stress Relief Sometimes whole family focused stress relief is extremely necessary when a parent is home all day and the other is not. The working parent may come home happy, but actually be bringing in more stress because they are not practicing family focused stress relief. The root prevention for this is setting up support systems.
 Where did your baby begin? With you and your partner and the love that you two share. When things do not feel solid we look at the roots. Sometimes the best place to connect is actually with your partner. If you are the birthing parent you may not understand the way your partner struggles to bond, but it is a struggle. Often times non gestational parents struggle to bond the same way the birthing parent does. This can happen in couples where neither parent is birthing the baby (adoption, surrogacy, etc). These feelings are normal and valid. Becoming parents is one of the two top ways to heal insecure attachment. You are a safe haven and secure base for your baby AND for your partner. I think it is important to remember here that so many bonding techniques for straight couples conceiving and birthing a baby do work for LGBTQIA+ community members and non gestational parents of any kind, as well.
One of the biggest things you can do for your infant to offer healing is talk to them. Tell them the story of how they came to be; egg and sperm origin, who carried their pregnancy, who was in the room when they came earthside, etc. Remind your infant of ways you connected with them. Did you pray for them? Did you speak to them even if you were not close by? How did you connect? Choosing differing routes for fertility can increase a baby's empathy: We learn empathy through these differing routes. When we see surrogates go through the journey of being a gestational carrier we see such great levels of empathy. I believe that level of empathy is being taught to baby in utero. When given the opportunity to speak to baby in utero, do it! Whether that opportunity is daily or monthly, do so. Tell them who you are, meet the 9 positive imprints mentioned above, and tell them what you will be doing to connect with them before you are physically in the same space again. In surrogacy, bonding with the surrogate is a great way to bond with baby as well. When interviewing surrogates remember to ask questions about meetings, communicating with baby, etc. You may want to be able to send voice messages knowing they will be played so that the baby can know you and your partner's voices. Keep your baby with you. This is the period of trust versus mistrust, according to Erikson's. This is the period where baby really needs to be with their parents. It is important to not allow excessive crying during this period. A great method of keeping baby close and crying minimal is babywearing. There are studies called Why African Babies Don't Cry that explore the story of babywearing in African villages and how it allows babies to nurse on demand and constantly have the comfort of their parent. EFT Tapping: Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping is a great emotional regulation tool to teach infants and a great communication tool from parents to infants. It can be great to remind your baby that things are okay when you are feeling emotional. It can also be a great way to signal it is bedtime. Try incorporating this in your nightly routine around the time that you are changing your baby's diaper. Do some tapping just before bed and a foot massage, easy to offer while already lying down on the changing table. Both are great bonding exercises that touch reflexology points. Speak to your baby and hold healthy eye contact: Your baby communicates through the universal language of emotion. Our eyes hold much emotion. They are a way we recognize each other and a way that we show we are listening fully. When speaking with your baby practice holding eye contact. You can look them in the eyes and blink until they begin blinking in sync with you, a bonding exercise! Skin to skin, anytime! Skin to skin is not just important during immediate postpartum. It should be done well into the weeks following, between both parents. It is a great way too bond and should even be done during bottle feeds. During bottle feeds remember to alternate which side you are feeding on, the same way you would with the breast. Family Focused Stress Relief In couples where one person is a birthing parent, but the other is not I think that whole family bonding practices are very important. This allows for there to feel like less of a hierarchy when it comes to one on one bonding. This also allows for whole family stress relief. Sometimes whole family focused stress relief is extremely necessary when a parent is home all day and the other is not. The working parent may come home happy, but actually be bringing in more stress because they are not practicing family focused stress relief. The root prevention for this is setting up support systems. This is important with one birthing parents or none. One on One Time One of the biggest recommendations I have for new parents is for the working parent to set up one on one time with the baby. This allows bonding and allows them to care for their partner. Their partner can get to bed early or take some alone time while the working partner is caring for baby. This could be a hour in the evening just to help with the bedtime routine. Snuggles, stories, and the final feeding done by the working parent while the birthing parent rests or takes a sitz bath. Maybe afterwards you eat dinner together if baby is asleep and the gestational parent is awake? Find a routine that works for your family and allows bonding between all parties. By caring for ourselves we care for others indirectly, what will that look like for your family? We can learn secure attachment, it does not have to happen prenatally AND you could be healing your own insecure attachment while pregnant through the work you are doing for your baby.
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The light isn't green forever. AuthorJess Kimball is a Full Spectrum Doula and Certified Lactation Counselor trained in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine. 
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