Imagining your baby

Having a baby and becoming a parent is a serious business. Whether or not you planned to have a baby, knowing you will be a parent can cause you to feel a mixture of excitement, apprehension, joy and worry. Experiencing such a range of intense and conflicting emotions with the prospect of having a baby can come as a bit of a shock, causing some new parents to feel confused, low in confidence, even anxious, and with a strong sense of responsibility, which may be overwhelming.

Throughout pregnancy, it is usual for parents to spend a lot of time daydreaming about their baby’s personality, and what he or she will look like; how life will be with this new family member, and the bond you will develop. You may feel overwhelming love or worry that you don’t feel enough love. When everything is progressing well, you may still feel concern about your unborn baby’s health and development, and even worry about their future; you may worry about how you will cope with caring for your baby, if you will be able to understand what your baby needs, or other matters such as financial demands or when you will need to return to work. The truth is, before the birth, almost all new parents experience an intense range of positive and negative feelings and thoughts associated with their baby, that they inevitably need a good deal of reassurance and support - and this is normal.

The feelings and thoughts new parents typically experience before a baby is born reflects an important and special, sensitive parental state, revealed in a range of feelings, thoughts and behaviours that occur for mothers and fathers, and shown to be most intense for mothers. This sensitive state is caused by pregnancy hormones, other natural body chemicals, obsessively thinking about the baby, and amazingly, a parents own early experience of being cared for as a baby, much of which will not be consciously remembered. The special, sensitive state is important because it begins and develops the bond you will have with your baby, as an individual human being, even before the birth. It helps you to mentally prepare for the emotional commitment and ongoing caregiving activities necessary to ensure your baby survives and thrives. Sharing your intense feelings and thoughts with others is valuable because it not only helps gain reassurance but, without purposely doing so, you are also signalling to close family and friends that you are likely to need additional support as a new parent to a fully dependent baby. In this way, everyone who matters is also being prepared to help care for you and your baby when he or she arrives.

Immediately following birth, and well into the first year of your baby’s life, the special, sensitive parental state that begun in pregnancy, progresses. Both mothers and fathers, but especially the mother, naturally become extremely pre-occupied with every aspect of meeting their baby’s needs. You may find that this natural but intense focus on your baby makes it difficult to organise your day in ways usual before the birth (an experience which people sometimes refer to as ‘baby brain’). Pressure from yourself or others, to carry on with life as it was before your baby arrived, can be stressful and make things even more difficult. It’s important to feel confident that this early, intense focus on your baby is not only normal but an important aspect of providing your baby with the care her or she needs, helps you to get to know them as an individual in their own right, as well as learning to be a parent.

Almost every new parent feels some anxiety in relation to caring for their baby, including the need to ensure that he or she will be safe and thrive in every way. As a new parent, you will experience heightened watchfulness (hypervigilance) over your baby, and may feel anxious about their safety and wellbeing, even in safe situations. It is common to think about and take steps to protect your baby from real and imagined dangers, caused by other people or the environment. Part of ensuring that you baby is safe is the irresistible need to check and double check that he or she is safe, healthy and contented, even when you know they are. Almost all parents do this, especially in response to small signals from the baby, like a murmur or slight movement. This checking (safety) behaviour is initially stronger at night, when you may find yourself checking, not only in response to your baby’s signals, but also because your baby has not called you in the usual way. Mothers especially can feel guilty and / or distressed if they are prevented or fail to check or respond to their baby’s signals.

Mothers and fathers feel an intense need to be close to their baby, providing them with the consistent, predictable care of one or two main caregivers. This experience is very important for the baby because it maintains their sense of safety and comfort, as well as supporting their ongoing physical, emotional and more general development. Mothers especially, can experience distress if separated from their baby, at the very least worrying that their baby will miss them, or that something bad will happen to the baby without their mother in attendance; that even trusted adults will not be able to properly care for the baby causing the baby distress. Mothers, fathers and babies need to be together as much as possible providing important physical and psychological closeness that strengthens the bonds between them.

It is important to say that all parents and caregivers will experience this bond and can facilitate their baby’s attachment, we now know this from intensive research; it is a biological feature of all mammals but particularly for human beings.

For more on attachement take a look at the following video: Ruth Feldman: Synchrony and the Neurobiology of Attachment

The feelings, thoughts and behaviours associated with the special, sensitive state that new parents experience is important because it ensures that you attend to your baby, keep him or her safe, so ensuring he or she thrives and develops healthily and happily. This sensitive state works through the combination of intense experiences, with positive ones, such as finding your baby the most beautiful, and the unpleasantness of negative feelings, such anxiety and repeated checking, which can be unsettling at best, and unbearable at worst. All this settles over time, as you become more confident as a parent and your baby develops. But being close to your baby, feeding, touching, cuddling, kissing, checking on, and playing with him or her will help you feel calm and in tune with them, as you navigate the transition to parenthood. Talking about your feelings and thoughts, especially those that worry or upset you, with other trusted adults and professionals, is also very helpful, not only to manage your experiences as a new parent, but also to get support both you and your baby.