The Breastfeeding Bond: How To Nurture Your Parental Connection To Your Newborn Baby

Breastfeeding an ideal way for new mothers to bond with their babies. Breastfeeding is wonderful, natural, and provides babies with key nutrients to set them up for a lifetime of health. Health benefits aside, breastfeeding is amazing because it nurtures and protects the special relationship between mother and child.

Here are some ways to help you and your newborn bond!

1. Babywearing

Babywearing can be a beneficial way to solidify the parent/child bond and help with breastfeeding! Similar to skin-to-skin, babywearing puts your baby in close proximity to your body and enables attachment-stimulating hormones to be released. Moms and dads alike can wear their newborn baby around the house and while out and about, allowing the baby to feel safe, protected, and secure. As your newborn baby adjusts to the big world around them, babywearing enables your newborn to feel calm and secure. This sense of security can solidify your new baby’s bond with you and help boost a mother’s milk supply.

The KeaBabies Baby Wrap Carrier is a wonderful addition to any new parent’s supply of baby gear! It is stretchy, comfy, and adjustable, making it perfect for both moms and dads! It is available in many different colors and even a ring sling option! A wrap-style carrier, such as the KeaBabies Baby Wrap Carrier, has been shown to help establish a healthy breastfeeding relationship by stimulating feelings of closeness and connection between mother and infant. Even more - you can actually nurse your baby while wearing them in a wrap carrier as well!

2. Hormones released

There is one very important hormone essential for breastfeeding and bonding: oxytocin often referred to as the “love hormone.” A mother’s body releases oxytocin whenever she is close to her baby, or even just thinking about her baby! Oxytocin helps enhance maternal instincts and also has calming properties, helping protect a new mother from postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. Oxytocin is essential to breastfeeding mothers, as it stimulates milk production and prepares a mother’s brain for healthy breastfeeding.

A mother’s body also releases other hormones, such as beta-endorphin, that is important for responding to your newborn baby’s needs. Beta-endorphin creates a sense of peace and pleasure, enhancing a mother’s bond with her infant. It enhances maternal instincts such as the intense desire to calm a crying baby.

3. Skin to skin

Skin-to-skin contact is vital for establishing a healthy breastfeeding relationship. Many hospitals are actually encouraging dedicated skin-to-skin time immediately following birth. Even if circumstances prevent a mother from doing skin-to-skin with her newborn baby right away, fathers can also do skin-to-skin with their babies!

Skin-to-skin contact helps with breastfeeding because it causes a mother’s body to release hormones that trigger milk supply. It also helps newborns to seek their mother’s breasts and nurse. Skin-to-skin bonding isn’t just important immediately following birth - use skin-to-skin contact any time your baby needs soothing and comfort! This type of closeness will help regulate your milk supply.

4. Bonding Through Different Senses

Babies bond through other senses as well. A newborn baby’s sense of hearing, touch, and smell are highly developed by the time they enter the world. Babies begin to hear and recognize sounds from within the womb. By the time they are born, they can already recognize the sound of their mother’s voice! Newborn babies will often turn their heads toward sounds that are familiar. When your baby arrives, take time to talk, read, and sing with him or her. Newborns are easily soothed by the sounds of their caregivers’ voices!

Babies are highly responsive to touch as well. Even newborns can appreciate a gentle massage, being held and rocked, and sleeping on or near a caregiver. This is why babywearing can be so helpful to new parents – it allows them to get things done, while still keeping their little one safe and close! Contrary to old wives’ tales, you can’t spoil a newborn – so hold and cuddle your baby as often as you desire!

Babies also have a strong sensitivity to taste. Newborns can detect changes in their mother’s breast milk. A nursing mother’s milk can actually vary in flavor depending on what they eat on any given day, so breastfeeding can be helpful in exposing your newborn to a variety of tastes long before they begin to eat solid food! Breastfeeding is a wonderful way to nourish and nurture your little one’s rapidly growing body and brain.

Many breastfeeding mothers are nervous about nursing in public for the first time. Just know that breastfeeding is healthy, natural, and special. Don’t be anxious or self-conscious – your precious little baby deserves to be fed whenever, and wherever, he feels hungry! If you prefer to nurse privately, the KeaBabies Nursing Cover is a wonderful addition to your breastfeeding supplies! It is luxuriously soft and breathable, and comes in a carrying pouch that makes it easy to stick in the diaper bag! It gives breastfeeding moms just the right amount of privacy, without making their babies too hot or uncomfortable.

Breastfeeding is a wonderful way to bond with your new baby. It provides them with essential nutrients for a healthy life, and also allows the body to release special bonding hormones to solidify the relationship between a mother and her child. If you want to give your infant the best start to life, we here at KeaBabies are here to encourage you and support you in your breastfeeding journey.