Love at First Touch

“I touched her cheek. It was soft and waxy, like a gardenia petal''

*”I held him close and laughed and cried. Now I believe in miracles.

* “He looked right at me, I fell into his eyes – and in love''

Memories of romantic encounters? No, these women are recalling the moment they first held their newborn babies. Parents have always known the power of the minutes and hours after birth. Now scientists report that this period offers a special opportunity to promote what they call bonding, close enduring attachments.

Since paediatricians Drs. Marshall Klaus and John Kennel of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, USA, described the phenomenon in 1972, other studies have supported the idea of a sensitive period during which parents and infants are ideally ready to bond. At delivery the infant is stimulated by his turbulent passage down the birth canal; the unsedated mother is often in a state of high excitement.

They are eager for each other – she to merge her image of the “inside baby'' with the real baby, the infant to resume its safe, warm, gently rocked existence. An infant's expressions of need trigger a physiologi- cal response in the mother. A baby's cry raises the temperature of the mother's breasts, some times causing a sudden dripping of milk.

Attracted by the warmth and milky fragrance, the baby nurses eagerly; the sucking increases the mother's production of oxytocin, a hormone that contracts the uterus, helps expel the placenta and arrests post- partum bleeding. This mutually conforting interaction aids the bonds of mother and infant.

Powerful Element :- Immediately after delivery, the baby is remarkably alert. He will – if kept warm and handled gently- lie quietly, looking around. He will follow a face moving slowly about 20 centimeters above his own. He responds to light, to clicking sounds, to the slightest touch. He turns his head towards a high pitched voice – the tone many parents adopt in talking to their babies – all in his first few hours of life.

It's more true, says Dr. Hugh Jolly of London that a mother needs rest as soon as she's given birth. She needs her baby. “A normal baby should be delivered straight into his mother's arms, where he can be caressed at the breast'' says Dr.Jolly. Caressing – touching all over – is a new mother's natural greeting and one of the most powerful elements in bonding. The delicate ritual of getting to know a baby, says childbirth educator Sheila Kitznger, “is an emotional unfolding''

At first, the new mother holds the baby stiffly, lika a bouquet of flowers. Then, the fingertips, she begins to explore. She traces the contours of the face with one finger, cups her hand around the infant's extremities, strokes the baby's torso with her pain. There's more than relief, mote than pleasure, in the safe arrival of helathy infant; there's ecstasy and kind of claiming, often accompanied by delighted commentary:

“Oh, look at the little mouth, the little nails. Hello, darling, hello'' Magical in itself, this swift getting-in-touch appears to produce prolonged benefits. In one study women are given their naked babies for one hour in the first two hours after birth, On each of the following three days the mothers held and caressed their babies for five hours.

Later, this group was compared with mothers given routine hospital care (glimpses of baby at birth, feeding every four hours). The “early and extended contact'' mothers touched their babies more, were more sooting when the babies cried and were more likely to look into the infants 'eyes during feeding.

Two years later, exchanges between a randomly selected group of extended contact mothers and their offspring still seemed richer; the mothers asked more questions, gave more detailed answers and fewer commands.