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What Babies Know & All Mothers Need to Know

Babies know how to synchronize with their mothers

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'For the baby, his mother is unique, without parallel, laid down unalterably for a whole lifetime, as the first and strongest love object and as the prototype of all later love relations for both sexes'.
Sigmund Freud

According to Doctors Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon , authors of “A General Theory of Love”, there is a mutually synchronizing hormonal exchange between mother and child which serves to regulate vital rhythms called ‘limbic regulation’. This regulatory information required by infants can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, immune function, and more. With babies it shows itself to be interdependent upon the physical presence of the mother, at times her regulatory processes being vital to the maintenance of her baby'sphysical and emotional health.

In premature babies for example, it’s been shown that the temperature of a baby in an incubator, even though the incubator remains warm, can be lower than the temperature of a baby placed on it’s mother. It’s known that the mother’s temperature will rise a whole degree in order to raise her baby’s temperature, or similarly will drop if her baby’s temperature needs to be lower. This mother and child interaction is known as ‘thermal synchrony’. Similarly a breathing dysfunction known as ‘periodic breathing’ was thought to be normal among premature babies placed in incubators, however this abnormality disappeared once the baby was held by it’s mother. The rhythm of the baby’s heart has also been shown to regulate around it’s mother and even sleep rhythms have been shown to be more synchronized when the mother and baby have consistent bodily contact.Other 'third world' cultures show that consistent bodily contact may also eliminate the use of 'nappies' as these mothers know instinctively through the movements of their babies, as and when, their babies need to relieve themselves.

Although most cultures do not sufficiently recognise, value and support the role of the mother it now seems that mothers, whose genes possess over a million years of evolutionary knowledge equipping them them for their role, may after all possess some of the answers sought by science.
Maternal responsiveness and close physical contact associated with limbic regulation although vital during infancy, is also something needed throughout childhood and on into adulthood. One of the physiological processes that limbic regulation directs is the development of the brain itself.

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