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	new baby bonding

A Mother Heals Her Infant’s Birth Trauma

My son had fussy periods each day when he cried a lot, but there was no medical problem. One morning, when my son was four months old, I was doing my usual morning activities. All of his needs had been met: he had comfortable clothes, had recently nursed and burped, and I was carrying him around. He started to fuss and then to cry. I sat down with him on the rug in the warmth from our southern window. I held him so he could see my face, and I smiled and nodded my head, telling him that he was doing a great job of crying. After a few minutes, his crying started to taper off.

I thought about his birth trauma and gently laid my hand on the part of his head where the metal vacuum extractor had bulged out his scalp and had even caused a significant laceration. (It had all visibly healed in a couple of weeks after birth.) While my fingers were on his head, his crying exploded forth once again. We did this ebb and flow about four or five times, lasting a total of 45 minutes. I felt very deeply connected to him during this time, and I was crying too, tears of joy and sadness. He fell into a deep sleep and woke up about an hour later, so alert and happy for the rest of the day. And from that day on, his crying episodes were markedly shorter.

—from Aletha Solter’s The Aware Baby (Revised Edition). Shining Star Press, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by Aletha Solter.