Satisfy your newborn’s needs

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The need for LOVE

There is no doubt that you love your baby enough, but you may wonder whether your little one is getting all he needs to grow up happy and healthy. The reality is that your baby requires an enormous amount of time – not just snippets of quality time, but large doses of quantity time. That’s just sitting together, being together, and letting the minutes, often hours, go by.

It sounds like bliss, but you’ll find it takes patience to slow down to your baby’s pace and enjoy the sweet nothings of watching the birds, or a simple baby massage. This time is vital, though, and your baby can almost never get enough of it.

Try this…

• Massage your baby. You can communicate love through the sense of touch. Your baby learns trust while being massaged and that human contact feels good and is healthy.
• Play with your baby at his pace without distractions. He’ll get attention, fun and pleasure, plus, he’ll release feel-good hormones that are vital for emotional wellbeing and bonding.
• Read bedtime stories every day, even before you think your baby can understand the words. He’ll love the focused attention and fall asleep feeling secure that you’re part of his sleep time, as well as his waking hours.
• “I take a bath with Samia and it relaxes us both. The skin-to-skin contact is a fabulous way to feel close to her. I imagine she feels like it’s just us two again, like when she was in the womb,” says Georgina Hayden, 32, from Liverpool, mum to Samia, 10 weeks.