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Week 39: I'm almost done bakin'!

Fetal development in pregnancy week 39

~length
20 in | 50 cm

~weight
7 lbs | 3.1 kg

Your rocket-baby may have already launched, but for those of you still waiting for the signal, it's just a matter of time before this entire situation gets rollin'!

You're all ready to have your sweet little bun's first birthday party, but are you prepared for just how noisy they're going to be?

Crying is Communication

Just so we're clear: the mother-infant bond is completely instinctual for your newborn, as their inability to speak, voluntarily move, much less feed themselves, renders them fully dependent on you for survival.

Because newborns are completely unable to protect or fend for themselves, their brains are hard-wired to only feel safe and secure when they're with mama - whether breastfeeding or simply taking in the world.

In other words: it is natural and normal for your infant to become anxious and cry until you pick them up and comfort them.

Certain "experts" recommend sleep training (which requires you ignore your mothering instinct and let your baby cry at night) and leaving baby to cry if they'd been fed and diapered.

These techniques are supposed to "foster independence" and prevent "spoiling" by "teaching" your infant that crying does not = mommy comforting them.

In reality, ignoring your infant's cries actually increases their general stress and anxiety levels and potentially predisposes them to emotional issues/disorders in the future.

In laymen's terms, sleep-training breaks your infant's heart over and over again until they give up trying to communicate with you.

Not to mention the fact that sleep-training will mess with your supply as night-feedings are a normal and healthy part of the infant meal-plan.

If those doctors analyzed the simple reasons why an infant cries, rather than trying to train the exquisitely sensitive newborn brain using forced neglect, they'd quickly understand that infant crying is a basic form of communication which reflects emotional distress in addition to the cries of discomfort from hunger pangs or a wet diaper.

"Waaah!" can easily mean, "I'm scared because I'm not with Mommy and I don't understand what that bright flashing loud noise is!" when left alone with a noisy TV.

INFANTS CAN'T MANIPULATE YOU (OR ANYONE)

Despite the disturbing statements of certain supposed experts, infants cannot cry to "manipulate" others, as they lack explicit knowledge of the world - which requires language.

Without language, all infants are incapable of higher-level brain processes that require an understanding of what a mind is, much less precisely how your mind works in variance from theirs.

No matter how clever you think your infant is, they cannot comprehend what you want, much less the fact you want to sleep through the night or not be interrupted while on the phone.

Infants cry for several simple reasons, which any attentive mother can immediately recognize. Crying communicates that your infant is unhappy, scared, tense, frustrated, hungry, or uncomfortable and/or in pain.

Without language, an infant can only cry in order to let you know what negative feelings they're experiencing.

Take home-message: your infant's cries are always meaningful and should be attended to, if only by picking them up to let them know mama's here.

Even after your toddler learns to speak, whenever they're sick, hurting, frustrated, or otherwise being challenged beyond their developmental capacity, reverting to their first form of communication - crying, will be the normal response and nothing to penalize them for.

In the meantime, your tiny new infant will need very little beyond the strength and warmth of their mother's arms holding them... and of course, your life-giving immunity-boosting breast milk.

Share your baby's development on Facebook!

MY BABY'S PROGRESS: WEEK 39

Only 1 more week to go

Just one week left till my due date! My baby's birthday is almost here & their brain is super-busy growing more complex & clever by the minute while their lungs and heart are working steady & strong. Did ...

Tuesday at 19:16 via Baby Gaga · Comment · Like

Chelsea

Week 39 Calendar Girl

February 2012

Enter my photo!

And how's mom doing?

While you're in your antsy pre-birth limbo monitoring all your symptoms and feeling the size of an international airport, try to take some time to reflect on the world into which your highly sensitive, helpless and vulnerable infant will be born.Mothers who take the postpartum phase in stride usually do so because they're physically healthy, have plenty of familial support, and generally feel good about the life they're living and are happy to start sharing it with their infant.

If you're all stocked up on newborn diapers (because trust us, you'll be changing them 10 times a day in the first months), blankets, and onesies, you've finished the easy part.

Have you started thinking about your relationship with your newest family member?

Bonding with your newborn

Despite our cultural tendency to idealize a mother's love as the purest form of love, not all mothers immediately love their newborns. For that matter neither do all fathers.

Prior to carrying another human inside of you, your ability to love was based on how another person made you feel, right?

You don't really automatically love someone just because they're in your family either. Heck, even if you say you "love" your parents, you know whether you're just saying it to say it, or actually feel love for them.

In the case of your newborn, you've been carrying this amazing little life inside of you for the past nine months and suddenly here they are in all their tiny, wrinkled, spotty, peeing and pooping glory, and nary a "thank you for carrying me around while I squashed your sciatic nerve into oblivion" to be heard.

The fact of their adorable tiny scale is helpful, the fact of their need for our body creates a physical bond we can't deny, but these aren't things that necessarily evoke love as you're used to experiencing it.

If - in that weird haze of postpartum sleep-deprivation, you don't immediately feel what you consider "love" for your infant, don't beat yourself up. So long as you feel compelled to care for them and make the effort to breastfeed, you will eventually start to feel that mother's love... even if you fail to breastfeed.

Most women take to motherhood like a second skin they've slipped into, quickly learning just how deep their capacity for personal sacrifice and patience must be in order to keep a happy home environment for their child.

The bonds evoked by breastfeeding are-- after all, how the human race survived this long despite our fragile beginnings.

Mothers who take the postpartum phase in stride usually do so because they're physically healthy, have plenty of familial support, and generally feel good about the life they're living and are happy to start sharing it with their infant.

DEALING WITH RESENTMENT

Some women report feelings of resentment and frustration with their sleep-ruining non-grateful newborn at some point or another.

Typically these feelings are evoked in a home environment where the mother has little outside support from family or her partner (or has no partner), essentially trapping her in a sleep-deprived state with her ungrateful newborn.

If you find yourself resenting your newborn, this is not the time to be proud and silent.

Ask for help from family and friends. Get someone to watch your baby so that you can get away for a few hours-- if only to sleep, shower and feel sane.

It's normal to feel a bit of resentment, even for the mothers who're bonding perfectly with their little sleep-ruiner, just realize this is the training ground for motherhood. Finding out how weak you are teaches you to be strong.

If you haven't yet tuned in: your infant will try your patience and exhaust you down to your last standing leg.

BUILD A LOVING HOME

Even if you're strung out and sleep-deprived, make the effort to sit down and be quiet with your newborn (if only while breastfeeding) and remind yourself just how desperately they need your love to become healthy happy children.

For an infant, love is as simple as holding them when they cry and feeding them when they're hungry. It gets much more complicated once they've developed a functioning will of their own, ideas of what they want, and the capacity to tell you why they want it.

If you make the effort now to create and maintain a loving, safe and peaceful home for your growing little family, you will be rewarded with a happy home and thriving offspring.

And don't worry mom, love is not an amazing nursery or the cutest clothes.

Love is the choice to wake up and feed your child in the middle of the night, to sacrifice your bodily independence and daily freedom so they can thrive; accept that your infant is physically incapable of being anything more than vulnerable and needy right now, and choose to be strong for your child by making the right choices in your life, so that as they grow - they will have parents they can respect, love and trust.