Baby’s First Days Are Home Time

During your baby’s first 40 days, it’s a good idea to dedicate yourself only to certain special things. This is the time to create a home nest, to be in a magically intimate space, to love with sensitivity, to get to know a little new person, to welcome him into this world and to love him skin to skin.

The world stops. Everything ceases to exist and at the same time it all begins, for only a few moments in life are as magical as those during which we finally get to see our child after we have carried him within us for nine months.

One of the most interesting books on childbirth is called Safe Postpartum, and its author is Beatrijs Smulders.  This writer, who is also a midwife by profession, makes us see in depth the ordinary chores, circumstances, and situations that mothers and fathers experience during this time. The episode actually goes much further, of course, than just the classic forty days.

As we have said several times in our blog, recovery from childbirth can take as long as a year. This book provides a realistic guide to all of these experiences that form the right kaleidoscope of fears, emotions, physical exhaustion, challenges, problems, and happiness.

One very clear thing is that  many mothers are almost forced to come out of the fully physical and emotional world that childbirth is and have to dive into that concrete reality that includes work, money, schedules, and daily routines. Even if the baby’s close and inviting life is in the mind of the gatherer.

How, then, can mothers balance all of this? How can every single responsibility be handled?  Motherhood is indeed a very complex but also a very exciting journey.

Whether you know this or not, the first 40 days after birth are very important to your baby – in fact, extremely important. This is the great reception, adaptation, and emergence of ourselves as mothers (and the emergence of our partners as parents).

The first 40 days after delivery require intimacy

These first days are for you. This is the realm of mother and father, and together with your baby, you create a unique atmosphere that is magical and colored by intense emotions – these emotions are for all three of you.

It’s just OK if you don’t want to see anyone else for a few days and if you leave all your goals and work aside. There is something more important in your life now, someone who demands your attention, caresses, food, and love.

Now is the time to create a home nest

Nest building is, of course, the real creation of a nest in nature. However, it is not foolish to use this word used in connection with animals even for a human baby, because the behaviors and goals are basically exactly the same: raising a child and giving him protection, warmth, love and, of course, food.

• Mom and Dad build a home nest with the baby so they can welcome him after giving birth.
• We do this because we need to be close to each other.
• We also build a nest so that we become role models for our baby.
• We do this to be calm, to reassure each other, and to take on new roles, needs, and responsibilities.
• We build a nest to take care of ourselves, because of course the baby needs everything from us, but in addition, the mother needs the father, it is exhausted and it hurts her body. And because we all need expressions of love, care, and attention.

• We build a nest to breastfeed and keep the baby’s skin against the skin and heart against heart.

Your best help in the first days is your sixth sense

These days present many, many challenges : adjustment, breastfeeding, sleeping, umbilical cord, pacifier, cradle, colic, and most of all, of course, crying.

• Being able to interpret baby crying is without a doubt the first necessary thing every mother takes on. Is he crying from hunger now? Or does he hurt? Or is it because of the diaper? It is common to become obsessed with this on the first day. Gradually, however, the  fears become calmed, and reason takes victory, but at the same time the so-called sixth sense emerges.

• With almost no realization of this, a sense of peace arrives during these next few weeks. You will realize that your baby needs your closeness the most. You realize that keeping her in your arms is soothing, and that breastfeeding relaxes her while providing nourishment.

Your maternal instinct, that brand new instinct, is a true super ability that puts you on exactly the same wavelength as your baby. These 40 days after childbirth will sometimes be difficult, but from the right perspective, they are one of the most important stages of your life.

What you need above all else is to create an intimate circuit and simply build a nest with your family. A world where rush, pressure, work, friends and visits await can wait even more days, as this is a time that only belongs to the three of you.