(By: Ramya Barithaya, Primary Montessori Guide , Assistants to Infancy )
As you prepare to welcome your newborn into your home, it's crucial to understand and cater to the needs of both the baby and the mother. This understanding forms the cornerstone of a nurturing environment for your family.
The child has been in a warm, cozy, and protected space inside the mother's womb, which is quite dark. The sounds are also low except for a few, like the mother's heartbeat and voice, regular environmental sounds like siblings' or the pet's, etc. The newborn's first need is to be received into an environment that is dimly lit, low in sounds and a gentle environment that doesn't represent a stark change from the previous environment. Birth is the first transition in the child's life, and we want it to be smooth. So, for the first few weeks, we must remember that the child must not encounter bright light or loud voices. Once the baby has acclimatized to the new environment, it can transition into bright places or places with slightly more sounds. The child's skin is the most sensitive organ, which gives them information about the world around him. When we receive the child, we must be gentle, and our moves must be slow and graceful. The acceptance and love with which we receive the child gets translated to the child through our touch.
It is essential to establish points of reference for the newborn child. Some significant points of reference are the mother's voice, the mother's heartbeat, the sibling's voice, and the dad's presence. These points of reference become the point for the child to connect to once they are outside the womb. Once the child is born, the first thing to be done must be to place them on the mother's chest to help them cope with the loss. The skin-to-skin contact with primarily the mother and, in addition to that with the father, offers the child assurance about the new environment. When the child experiences distress, it is seen that the mother's voice soothes the child because they would have heard it a lot when in the womb.
Similarly, the clothes we dress the child in must be made of natural fabrics like cotton and bamboo so the skin can breathe through them. For the first two weeks, the child's body cannot regulate its temperature. Therefore, we must remember to regulate the temperature of the room the child is in and ensure that, depending on the weather, we are layering the child with clothing items, receiving blankets, etc.
From birth, babies are sensitive to the order around them. The order in the physical environment and the order in the care given to the child become crucial for newborns because they orient them to this new and strange world they have recently entered. So, we must prepare designated areas to change the child, feed the child, bathe the child, provide movement opportunities, etc. These designated areas help the child understand the world around them by creating reference points that give them a sense of security.
We need to provide the baby with a designated space (it can be anywhere in the house). In this space, we can have things for the child, like a movement mat, to explore their body movements. We can place aids like mobiles for visual development and different manipulatives that are developmentally appropriate for the child.
Safety is a significant aspect of preparing the home for a newborn. We must ensure that each and everything around the child is sturdy. We must think of things from a child's level. For the first few months, the baby mostly sleeps through the day. Here, safety aspects would be safeguarding the place the baby sleeps in. For example, if the baby sleeps in a large bed, we must ensure there are no chances of the baby falling, as even newborns can slither on their backs. When the baby starts moving, we must add another layer of safety to ensure that everything at the baby's level is safeguarded, like furniture corners, no loose items that can be mouthed, etc. The bathrooms must always be supervised. The safety aspects and details will vary according to your space.
A few principles to follow when preparing the space for the newborn child and the mother
Discuss some key ideas before the child's arrival. As a family, it is crucial to discuss the details of baby care, like cloth diapers/disposable diapers, the night care routine, exclusive breastfeeding or a mix of breastfeeding and bottle feeding, and handling chores, food, groceries, etc. This helps establish systems that will help smooth the difficult journey of having a newborn and leave the rest for the exhausted mother.
Respecting your child's natural rhythm is key to their development. Remember, a newborn doesn't have a circadian rhythm at birth, so it's important to let it develop naturally over the first few months. We must understand the child's cues for hunger, comfort, skin-to-skin, burping, changing nappies, etc and cater to that need.
The mother and the child need to be together for the first two months after birth. In the first two months, the newborn child builds a preferential relationship with the mother, which becomes the prototype for all future relationships, and it embeds an essential trust in the world. This aspect is extremely crucial from a developmental perspective. So, the home and everything that happens in a house, like chores and care for older siblings, must be taken care of so the mother can focus on building a relationship with this newborn baby. The mother must feel supported to do this.
