28/08/2019
You can't cuddle your baby too much?
Do you ever stop consider how odd it is that so many advise that you don’t cuddle your baby too much? Picking up and hugging a baby is the most natural thing in the world, whether it’s your own baby or somebody else’s. We have this instinctive drive to want to squidge and protect them. When they cry, it sets off innate drives that have protected our species since the dawn of time. Avoiding picking a baby up ‘too much’ (whatever that means), literally goes against every ounce of evolutionary driven behaviour and biology in our bodies.
What has the world come to when so many believe hugging too much is ‘spoiling’? What a broken and harsh world we live in where people believe that hugs should be rationed. Imagine the impact restriction of loving touch in infancy (and beyond) has had? We need to break this cycle of touch starvation, not perpetuate it.
So, hold your baby while they cry, hold them when they’re happy. Hold them while they sleep, hold them when they wake. Hold them while you rest, hold them when you’re busy and think you have ‘more important things to do’. Never, ever be afraid to hold them ‘too much’; it just isn’t possible, neither is it a ‘bad habit’, or ‘ a sleep prop’. By holding your baby, as much as you and they want, you are taking one small step towards changing the world for the better - and what an important job that is! 💕
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