Your baby’s skin is a blank canvas at birth. Once they are born, they need their skin and gut to be filled with their own incredible living shield made of trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses. This is their microbiome, as unique as their fingerprint, which they’ll get from your skin, the air around them, and even during birth from your poo! Their microbiome is the protective shield which adapts throughout their life to help fight off infections and diseases.
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Babies arrive varnished with a layer of amazing vernix, a cheesy protective substance which melts into their skin in hours. Their skin is 30% thinner and more prone to irritation, breakdown and dehydration- so needs your support and care to thrive. Support your baby’s skin by moisturising with natural and gentle products and after every bath.
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Breastmilk is living tissue and not only provides nutrition, but every feed is teeming with antibodies, stem cells, gut sealants, hormones and prebiotics, one teaspoon of this stuff has over 3 million germ killing cells in it. Providing an abundance of beneficial bacteria in the gut that accompanies your child throughout life as a living inner shield of protection, your milk is the perfect fuel to power your baby’s health and development.
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Ever wondered why your baby wakes up several times during the night, especially during the first 6 months. Mothers also tune into their babies sleep and wake patterns, but babies also have a clever built-in mechanism that helps to protect them from sudden infant death, so frequent waking functions as a circuit breaker in their brain – stopping them from sleeping too deeply for too long and may be triggered by internal messages to the baby to wake and take a few deep breaths. Frequent waking is most common in the first 6 months, after which most babies tend to sleep for longer stretches.
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The shine on new parenthood can quickly become tarnished when you have to look after a brand new human whilst recovering from the physical and mental toll of pregnancy, labour and birth. Don’t beat yourself up if all you’ve managed to do is eat toast, let the cat out, feed your baby and have a cry though, having super crap days is normal! What you need to do is harness the support of those around you. The speed of your recovery depends on not being shy about asking family, friends, neighbours and whoever else to help you out. When you’re sleep deprived and exhausted, ask for a lasagne instead of lilies and let visitors know they shouldn’t come without a bag of groceries, a homecooked meal or a willingness to lend a hand with the laundry!
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Maternal instincts are widely acknowledged in mammals but have been relegated to the realms of myth by the parenting coaches and consultants. Our maternal instincts really are incredible. Humans are mammals and feel an almost gravitational pull towards our babies, helping to keep them and you baby safe.
Now we’re not talking about ‘learned behaviour’ such as breastfeeding attachment or knowing what’s causing your baby to cry, we’re talking about the instincts that wake you in the night to check on your baby, the instinct to know that the Shush noise we’ve been using to settle babies for centuries, millennia even, is the same noise your baby heard in the womb - how did we know that before scans showed us this?
All parents have instincts, but the fetal stem cells circulating mum’s body are a true testament that the ‘maternal instinct’ is the supreme superpower.
