The Essential First Year: What babies need parents to know

290 Pages·30.254 MB·English

by  Penelope Leach

Penelope Leach
the
Essential
First Year
What babies need parents to know

About the author
Penelope Leach, a trusted source of child development information and
child care advice for parents all over the world, is a research psychologist
specialising in child development, and a passionate advocate for
children and parents. She is also a mother and grandmother.
After a first degree in history at Cambridge University, a graduate
diploma in social work and then a PhD in psychology from the University
of London, she studied many aspects of child development and
parent-child relationships under the auspices of the Medical Research
Council. Penelope also holds an honorary doctorate in Education and
is an honorary senior research fellow at the Tavistock Clinic and the
Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at
Birkbeck, University of London. In recent years she co-directed the
UK’s largest-ever programme of research into the effects of various kinds
of child care on children’s development in the first five years. Her most
recent book, Child Care Today (Polity Press) was published in 2009.
With five years of research already behind her, though, the births
of her own children made her aware of the gulfs between theory and
practice, professionals and parents, adults and children, and even
men and women. As much of her subsequent work has been devoted
to building bridges across these gulfs from both sides as to academic
research. Accordingly, she is a past President and Chair of the Child
Development Society, Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a
founder member of the Association of Infant Mental Health-UK, yet she
also works for parents’ and children’s organizations and until 2008 was
President of the National Child Minding Association. Her classic book
Your Baby & Child (Dorling Kindersley, reissued 2010) has sold over three
million copies.

the
Essential
First Year
What babies need parents to know
Penelope Leach
LONDON, NEW YORK, MUNICH,
MELBOURNE, DELHI
Project Editor Claire Tennant-Scull
Project Designer Carolyn Hewitson
Editors Emma Maule, Terry Moore
Senior Art Editor Nicola Rodway
Senior Production Editor Jennifer Murray
Senior Production Controller Man Fai Lau
Creative Technical Support Sonia Charbonnier
Photography Vanessa Davies
Art Direction for Photography Peggy Saddler
Publishing Manager Anna Davidson
Managing Editor Penny Warren
Managing Art Editors Glenda Fisher,
Marianne Markham
Publisher Peggy Vance
Every effort has been made to ensure that the
information in this book is complete and accurate.
However, neither the publisher nor the author is
engaged in rendering professional advice or services
to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and
suggestions contained in this book are not intended
as a substitute for consulting with your healthcare
provider. All matters regarding the health of you and
your baby require medical supervision. Neither the
publishers nor the author shall be liable or responsible
for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any
information or suggestion in this book.
First published in Great Britain in 2010
by Dorling Kindersley Limited
80 Strand, London WC2R ORL
Penguin Group (UK)
Copyright © 2010 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © Penelope Leach 2010
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the copyright owners.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-4053-3684-0
Printed and bound by Star Standard, Singapore
Discover more at www.dk.com
Contents
About this book 6 Colic? 148
Settling into their own bodies 152
Pregnancy and birth Early playing: looking first, doing later 154
Becoming sociable 156
Preparing to be parents 10
Where would you like to have your baby? 18 A member of the family
Antenatal testing 20
Changing relationships 22 Loving and being loved 164
Making a birth plan 26 Shared parenting 166
Thinking ahead about being parents 28 More feeding 170
Practical planning 32 More sleeping 188
Planning a “babymoon” 34 Coping with sleeping problems 194
When will your pregnancy end? 36 More about crying 196
Birth 39 Comfort habits 203
Is this bonding? 42 Milestones not race tracks 206
Special care 47 Taking charge of his body 209
Making sure the baby is all right 50 Moving towards crawling 214
Beginning to get onto his feet 217
New baby, new parents Stages in learning to walk 220
Seeing and doing 222
Meeting your new baby 58 Touching and taking 224
Meeting your new baby’s needs 66 More listening and more and more talking 230
Your new baby’s reflexes 72 Moving towards actual speech 234
Your new baby’s senses 74
Newborn crying 78 Not exactly a baby
Newborn feeding 80
– nor quite a child
The beginning of breast-feeding 84
Thinking about bottle-feeding 94 The wiggly path from baby to toddler 242
Newborn sleep 100 Eating 244
Growing 250
Settling in and
Changing sleeping patterns 252
moving forward Learning through play 258
Beginning to think about discipline 268
Settling in together 108 Your baby’s brain 270
Watch the baby not the clock 110 Thinking about working outside your home 276
Settled babies’ feeding 116 You and your baby are on the same side 280
Settled babies’ sleeping 129
Growing 135
Settled babies’ crying 138 Index 282
Causes of crying and ways of comforting 141 Acknowledgments 288
About this book
Why a book that’s only about babies in the first does help to give children the resilience to
year, especially when Your Baby and Child cope with whatever life may throw at them.
covers the first five? And where’s the sense in There are many influences on your baby that
calling it The Essential First Year when there’s you cannot control, such as the genes she was
obviously got to be a first if there’s going to passed at conception; her experiences in the womb
be a second or third? The answer is that while and at birth, and things that happen later on, too.
we’ve known for a long time that the first year But although you can’t prevent negative events,
of life is important, it’s only in this generation your relationship with your baby is a major influence
that we’ve begun to understand just how on how powerfully and how lastingly she is affected
important it is and why. Human babies are bom by them. Her genetic inheritance is a good example:
at a much earlier stage in their development we all carry millions of genes and more and more
than most baby mammals, and their brains are specific ones are being identified for everything
amongst the least developed parts of them. from breast cancer to an ear for music. But while you
Those baby brains don’t just grow according and her father can do nothing to change the genes
to genetic instructions, and get more efficient she got from you both, you certainly influence the
with age. Brains’ development – structural and impact they have on her. Many of those millions
biochemical – and function depend on babies’ of genes, desirable and undesirable, are only likely
environment and experience in that essential to be “expressed” in particular circumstances or
first year, and especially on warm, secure, environments, otherwise they sit silently in the
responsive relationships with mothers, fathers DNA. Since the relationships your baby has
or caring adults who stand in for them. with you are the most important aspect of her
So your baby’s first year with you will go a environment, those relationships are bound to affect
long way towards shaping the child, adolescent some of the ways her genetic inheritance plays out.
and adult (perhaps parent) she becomes. Of course Likewise, your baby’s experiences in the
even the most idyllic first year can’t prevent bad womb and at birth are mostly out of your control,
things happening to children later on, but we but although you can’t do anything to prevent
know much more than we did about what makes a traumatic forceps delivery from stressing your
a first year good, and we know that it can and baby (as well as yourself), you may be able to
moderate, even head off, longer term-effects by scientific papers, though, so some of the most
understanding her extra crying and irritability interesting are encapsulated in boxes headed
in the first days and handling it sensitively. Even “From research” and “You may hear…” and some
when babyhood is long past, the security of parents’ voices can be heard in “Parents talking
children’s earlier relationships remains vital. Any about…”. Similar boxes highlight some useful
child will certainly be thrown off course by horrific tips for parents of twins.
happenings when she is two- or seven-years-old Stressing the lifelong impact of your relationship
– such as losing a parent or being abused – but with your baby piles extra responsibility onto
how deeply an individual child is affected, how well you when you’re only just coming to terms with
she manages her feelings at the time and how having a baby at all. But the information is there
completely she bounces back onto her previous and since this is a no-punches-pulled kind of
developmental track, depends on resilience book it doesn’t try to wrap it up. Once you can
that’s rooted in that essential first year. get your heads around your own enormous
“Parents matter” is not a new message. influence on this new person’s whole way of
Women have always known that babies’ survival being, though, the downsides of being a parent
depends on being mothered. But this is the first may fall into a different perspective. Being
generation to understand that it is not solely the woken in the night again and again for three
relationship a mother makes with her baby that months in a row can seem overwhelmingly
matters; the ongoing relationship between the awful, but when you understand why babies are
baby and her father matters too, and both are so inclined to wake, you’ll ignore anyone who
responsible not only for her immediate health says yours is doing so to “manipulate” you, and
and wellbeing but also for her whole growth and you’ll know that she won’t go on doing it forever.
development as a person, now and in the future. And when you realise that how you react (or
It’s also in this generation that many parenting decide not to react) when she cries for you
issues that have always been matters of opinion tonight may still play a part in how she reacts
and open to argument, are beginning to be to stress next year, and 30 years on when she’s
resolved by scientific evidence that parents mothering your grandbaby, the torment of those
should be aware of. This is not a “how to” book awakenings may pale beside the brilliance of the
like Your Baby and Child; it is a “why?” book. smile with which she greets you.
Some of the issues are similar but the viewpoints
are different. Most parents don’t have time to
follow child development arguments or look up