Gentle First Year: The Essential Guide to Mother and Baby Wellbeing in the First Twelve Months

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About the Publisher

Foreword

It has taken me far too long to try to think of what to say about Gowri. How do you describe a lady who you feel changed your experience of giving birth, a woman who thinks of her mothers and readers as if they were her children, someone who you believe contributed to you and your child?

I honestly believe that Gowri is a one-off and I feel so lucky to have been able to learn from her great knowledge and affection. It is brilliant that everyone can now share the Gowri experience through her books: becoming aware that we are animals experiencing mother nature’s magic, learning how to open your body to its journey ahead and to connect with the most amazing thing inside you – your little baby. Both before and after birth, Gowri teaches you to visualize what is going to happen to you, and to understand how to make that as easy as possible through diet, exercise and just taking the time to breathe and pause! Gowri taught me what was happening physically to me and my baby and she also opened my mind to what was happening spiritually.

There is so much information available to us now about how to optimize our pregnancy that we can almost forget that there’ll be a baby at the end of it! It’s as if the journey becomes the destination. And that journey has continued after my baby’s birth as well. There is so much to absorb and learn in the first few months of becoming a mother, and I have been so grateful for Gowri’s support and expertise. She had lots of tips for soothing the baby to sleep and her medical training meant that I could really trust her advice when he was out of sorts! But as much as anything, my greatest comfort was knowing that my post-natal recovery ensured that I could dedicate all my energies to being the best mother I can be. I am sure that by reading this book you too will experience the Gowri phenomenon and enjoy the most important journey life can ever give you – the gentle first year.

Stella McCartney

Introduction

A Shared Journey for Mother and Baby

At every birth, two people are born – a baby and a mother.

Ancient Indian wisdom

It’s a common complaint that after nine months of getting seats on the bus and foot rubs by night, the mother is all but forgotten when the baby is born. She might have a sore perineum and afterpains, but this just can’t compete for attention with the baby’s patch of fuzzy hair and ten perfect toes. This sudden neglect has always seemed strange to me because in India, where I grew up, the birth is regarded as a rebirth for the mother too.

Motherhood reveals a woman’s best self, ready to nurture and compromise for love of her child.

All new parents aspire to being and doing their best for their babies, and it’s important to recognize the journey the mother has to take, as well as her baby. This fundamental oversight is repeated at many different cultural levels, and it’s not just partners and new grandparents who are at fault. Have you noticed how most baby books take sides? Some empathize with the baby – tiny, exhausted and completely dependent upon you; others go with the mother – huge, exhausted and completely dependent upon the midwife. The principal ambition of this book is to tell both sides of the story, because you and your baby both have a lot of growing and learning to do in this first year.

Those of you who followed the programme in my first book, The Gentle Birth Method, will know I regard pregnancy as a shared journey between mother and baby, and that I use a variety of different techniques – such as visualizations and self-care – to promote deep bonding in utero. The Gentle First Year builds on this foundation by nurturing your emotions every bit as much as your body, and showing you how to do the same for your baby.

the importance of bonding

If these twelve months are a mountain you must scale together, the success of the climb rests on the preparation made at base camp.

Bonding underpins both my prenatal and postnatal programmes. I believe that the more you can do to cultivate it (massage, songs, eye contact, play), the more mother and baby will thrive. If these twelve months are a mountain you must scale together, the success of the climb rests on the preparation made at base camp. I believe that the best start for every mother and baby is an intensive and exclusive confinement period in what I call the ‘red tent’, which eclipses everything other than getting to know each other. And I’m not alone in thinking this – I’ve got the weight of history on my side too.

the red tent

Much of my first-year programme is rooted in this ancient postnatal concept. The red tent has been passed down from the nomadic communities of the Jacobi era in the Middle East and still exists in modified form in my native India. The red tent refers literally to the tent to which the women retreated during their menstrual flow. Men were prohibited from entering, and all duties – cooking, cleaning and sexual relations – were suspended until they re-emerged three or four days later.

Why is this relevant? Well, apart from being used for this monthly hiatus, the red tent was also a post-partum retreat, where the new mother and baby rested, recovered and were restored from the birth for 40 days. During this time, the mother did not come out of the tent, but literally fed and slept with the baby, and was massaged and tended to by the other women.

It is still customary in India for the expectant woman to stay at her parents’ home from the 28

week (seventh month) of pregnancy, and then for three months after the birth. The mother rests in a specially designated room where she is nourished, nurtured and allowed to heal in much the same way as advocated by the ancients. I grew up seeing at first hand the restorative effects of such intensive post-partum care. It is my wish to prescribe to my mothers a unique, powerful – and empowering – postnatal programme, which integrates these philosophies of the red tent with mainstream medical practices.

creating a cocoon

Of course, for the Western lifestyle, a literal interpretation of the red tent confinement is unrealistic. Many mothers try to discharge themselves from hospital the day after the birth, so convincing them to stay in a room for three months is hardly a viable option. But what is relevant is the idea of ‘cocooning’ yourself, drawing a metaphorical curtain around you which shields you from the demands and pressures of daily life. Life is not normal in those first three months – your sleep is broken, your body may well feel battered and bruised, and you face great challenges as you ease your baby into this noisy, bright world. But recovery and discovery lie before you, and the bond you cultivate with your baby has the transforming power to change both your lives.

tips for moving beyond the red tent

The wisdom behind the confinement of the red tent is to promote rest, recovery and deep bonding. My strongest advice to new mothers is to stay at home as much as possible – certainly for the first three weeks, ideally up to six weeks and, in my dreams, up to three months. But there invariably comes a time when the outside world must become part of your lives again, and although you might have to go out with the pram to do the weekly shopping, it’s also lovely to go for a gentle walk around the park. When you do start to go out together, dab a drop of Australian Bush Flower remedies – such as Angelsworth or Fringed Violet or the easily available Rescue Remedy – on the baby’s fontanelle. This will soothe the baby from the cacophony of outside stimulus and can become a comforting ritual on your first excursions together.

how this book will support you

I feel this book will have succeeded in its purpose if it helps you to receive physical assistance in the early weeks after the birth, and emotional support for the developmental and nurturing issues which come thick and fast in the first year. You will find that the emphasis of this book naturally shifts as the baby grows.

In the first three months, the principal issues are physical. We can, together, help treat and heal any specific trauma you may have suffered from the birth; advocate treatments that fine-tune your body’s transition out of the pregnant state; as well as addressing and resolving your emotional issues surrounding the birth. For your baby, we can explore how to make him or her feel emotionally held and secure; advise physical treatments that eliminate any residual pressures from the birth; boost natural immunity; and offer practical tips to help soothe, calm and settle your baby into deep slumber.

After navigating this intense healing period of the first three months, the emphasis moves to a more emotional plane, showing you and your baby how to enjoy each other. I am opposed to the hot-housing trend, which places undue pressure on early achievement, and firmly believe that babies thrive when nurtured by delighted and committed parents.

It’s not the ‘big’ things that matter – like speaking French or sleeping through the night – but the delicious little gestures that convey love, security and comfort.

To paraphrase John Lennon, ‘Life is what happens to you whilst you’re busy making other plans,’ and there couldn’t be a better sentiment for parenting. It’s not the ‘big’ things that matter – like speaking French or sleeping through the night – but the delicious little gestures that convey love, security and comfort. A cashmere teddy bear may be intended as a big show of love, but a bedtime massage feels just as blissful to your baby; what’s more, it is profoundly bonding and can become a much-loved part of your daily routine. So find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and look for joy – not perfection – in the details.

If having a baby takes away many things – freedom, independence, sleep, seats on the bus – it also gives back so much more: a sense of wonder, bold curiosity, seeing the world with fresh eyes again. A rebirth, perhaps!

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

The First Week

Embracing Motherhood

Bonding with the Baby

She knew very well how babies smell; she knew precisely. ‘Well,’ the wet nurse began. ‘… They don’t smell the same all over, although they smell good all over. Their feet, for instance, smell like a smooth warm stone, or like fresh butter … And their bodies smell like a pancake that’s been soaked in milk. And their heads, up on top, at the back of the head, where the hair makes a cowlick … here is where they smell best of all. It smells like caramel. Once you’ve smelled them there, you love them whether they’re your own or somebody else’s.’ Perfume, Patrick Suskind

Having delivered thousands of babies over the years, one of my favourite moments is watching the new mother smelling her newborn baby’s head for the first time. Most are hardly aware they’re doing it, but in that split second when the mother inhales the exquisite scent of new life, she falls in love. After nine long months, she can at last see her baby, touch her baby and hear her baby, but it’s when she smells her child’s pristine dewiness that the cocktail of bonding hormones really starts to fizz. And it’s not just a temporary kick. Years later, mothers can be found wistfully sniffing talcum powder bottles in supermarket aisles and wearing talc-based perfumes (astute perfume houses cottoned on to our nostalgia long ago).

Happily, it’s a requited love. Whilst it takes weeks for the baby to decipher faces and sort out voices (everything sounds muffled in the womb), a newborn infant can detect the smell of her mother’s milk almost immediately. It has been shown that a minutes-old baby, placed on the mother’s tummy, will grapple, heave, shake her head from side to side, nuzzle into the mother’s breast and find the nipple to suckle, led entirely by smell.

It’s an amazing thing to see in action. At every birth I attend, I’m always looking for that transforming moment when the fundamental survival instinct and urge to protect becomes something deeper and more spiritual; an impulse that takes a parent beyond the instinct to merely raise a child to maturity, and actually nurture, cherish, indulge and adore the child to its best possible self.

We all know this as bonding, of course, the pop-psychology buzzword for the modern parent. But whilst bonding is indeed an inherent part of parenthood, we don’t always acknowledge that it is not an automatic response. If you want a deep, nourishing relationship with your child which soothes your soul, then it will need tender cultivation, shared experience and, yes, a smattering of hormonal alchemy.

There’s a line in Lucy Atkins’ book, Blooming Birth, which really resonates with me: ‘Birth is just the start – parenting’s the biggie.’ She’s absolutely right, and the biggest help you can have when negotiating the myriad minefields of toddlerhood, pre-pubescence and adolescence is the solid bond you establish with your child during your pregnancy and at birth. Bringing with it an empathy, sensitivity and kindness that endure throughout the myriad experiences life throws at you, it starts right here, with your newborn and her soft, fuzzy head.

why bonding matters

The endorphins released mutually by mother and baby during the birth process are very important for the deep bonding and mutual attachment necessary for the survival of the infant. This is one of the reasons why I work so hard to deliver gentle births that will promote greater levels of endorphins being released at birth. In the interests of mother–child bonding, health professionals should be geared towards preventing fearful births where the fear hormone, adrenaline, inhibits endorphin production.

Sleep Bonding

My Mother came to me and lay down beside me, and the warmth of her body comforted me. Secure in the knowledge of her love, I began to cross over into sleep.