- It’s natural to want to be held
If you give a baby your finger, especially at the beginning, it’s a reflex for him to curl his sweet little fingers around it. Babies also love being held, there’s this belief of not holding your child too much because he’ll get used to it or not to have him getting used to contact naps but it’s just another reminder that it’s so natural to want to be held, to be comforted. We’re living in an era where people may prefer sitting at home, not wanting to be bothered to go out and where that comfort is being found in dopamine hits on our phones through notifications and mindless scrolling which are actually showing to increase loneliness, anxiety and depression.
- Be Present.
I sometimes pick up my phone during the day going to it for a purpose only to forget that purpose having been pulled by notifications, unexpected emails or some other other reason. All of this, only to look up from my phone and see my little guy flash a huge smile at me. He reminds me that those are more of the moments I want more of. Presence with my loved ones. Smiles and joy of priceless moments I’ll look back on forever.
- It’s natural to be happy.
The little guy will coo and speak in the mornings and flash a huge smile at me at 6 am – I am not going to lie when I say, I ask him to go back to sleep. But he just smiles and giggles with no real intention of going back to sleep. I see babies, it’s almost like they are just naturally happy, they don’t need a reason to be happy, they’re just naturally so and if they’re unhappy it’s generally, they’re tired, hungry or gassy. People will walk past him, smiling and playing with him in hopes of a smile back and when that smile so easily comes, that person will walk away, almost fulfilled that they could make him smile. It’s just so natural to be happy that we all crave it, almost like it’s our true human nature and somewhere along the way we got caught up in being serious and grown up.
- Skin to Skin
They say when your baby is being fussy, offer him skin to skin contact. It’s shown to calm both the mother and the baby. It regulates temperatures and heartbeats and has several other benefits. In today’s world, we are spending most of our “human time” are on phones or computers – under the illusion that that is human contact but actually reduces are social bandwidth leaving us with less time to actually spend with friends in person.
These are small reminders, I find, of our true human nature. Small aspects to bring us back to our natural joyful states.