Baby Guru

My daughter was born by emergency C-section, and my husband was the first to hold her. He was only willing to relinquish her for nursing. Thank goodness, he couldn't lactate! Right after her birth, I was so foggy on awakening from the anesthesia I wasn't even capable of holding her for a while.

It was clear that food isn't everything, as she bonded strongly to him. He stayed in the hospital with me and she slept on is chest, while I anxiously watched, afraid she'd fall. Months later, when she developed colic, I walked the floor, turned on the water or washing machine, and tried everything to soothe her piercing, painful cries. When I was exhausted and all else had failed, I would wake him and within a few minutes she would calm down. I hated to wake him since he had to go to work early, and I was staying home.

When she was about 6 months old, he left on a business trip for a couple weeks. She seemed to get sick, got a small fever, and cried a lot. I remember trying to comfort her and feeling so frustrated. Suddenly, I became aware that as I became more frustrated, her crying became more intense. I relaxed,and her crying subsided to a low level.

It took her a while to train me to relax and just accept her crying, and when she had completed my training we were both so much happier.

It was only years later that I realized why her training had been so effective. Humans really do sense vibrations, and energy does get translated in the subtlest ways. Perhaps I was holding her a little differently when frustrated, but the key was to change myself, going from frustrated and contracted, to relaxed and expanded.

But how do you relax when you are holding a screaming baby? It comes when you accept the situation as it is. When I stopped wanting her to stop crying, when I was suddenly willing to just hold her or put her in her crib, whether she was crying or not, things improved. I became less frustrated because I wasn't resisting. There is a story that monkeys are trapped by putting fruit in a glass jar. The monkey sticks its hand in and grabs the fruit, but the fist makes it impossible to get its hand out. The monkey never thinks to drop the fruit. I never thought to drop my desire that things be different.

Of course, as with children, with parents. It takes a long time to teach them to say please and thank you, and a long time to teach us to relax! I'm grateful to have had such a cute, persistent and effective teacher.