A Mother's Touch

Tonight Jimmy was trying to feed Emery her bottle and put her to bed. She has never taken food well, breast, bottle, or spoon, and tonight was no exception. She was screaming bloody murder in there and fighting him no matter what he tried. I was holding myself back from going in there to help because I didn't want it to seem like I deemed him incompetent and was trying to take over. But eventually he called for aid.

I picked her up and cuddled her for a minute. I grabbed a nearby stuffed elephant and made her laugh by flopping it's ears. Then, while I was still standing, I cradled her in my left arm half-sitting, half-laying and showed her the bottle. She didn't reach for it, but she didn't start screaming at the very sight of it which is a good sign. I let her contemplate it for a few seconds, then when she pulled her hand out of her mouth I put the bottle in it and she took it. I let her get used to it for a minute before I sat in the rocking chair. And I sat. Then I let her be half-sitting for another minute before I gently eased her into a more natural laying position. Her eyes were closed before the bottle was half finished.

"Mother's Touch" Jimmy said, and shook his head and sighed as he walked out of the room. As I finished feeding Emery and watched her drift off to sleep, I contemplated what that means. Presumably, that means that the baby responds to mama better than anyone else. And even if someone else did exactly what mama does, it wouldn't work. But I think it's something more.

I notice every little minutia of change that she goes through. I notice if she is more comfortable in this position or that. I notice how she responds when I try this or that. I notice when she liked something yesterday but now she likes something else. I notice when she moves forward in development and I notice when she seems to temporarily regress. Today, for example, I noticed that she got up on her hands and knees in a different way than before. A way that's that much closer to crawling. And I noticed that she was able to move from laying on the floor back to a sitting position for the first time today. Not major milestones, but enough for me.

So although a baby may respond better to mama simply because she's mama, I also think that she responds better to mama because mama knows her best, knows better than anyone else how to handle it when she's fussy or hurt or upset or just plain cranky. And that may be mama's secret after all...