Dolphins Nurse and Carry Their Babies, Just Like Us

Dolphins are incredible, intelligent animals - more intelligent than chimpanzees, according to some scientists. They are also mammals, which means they must give birth to immature, helpless calves and nurse them until they can fend for themselves. The mammals of the sea might seem very different from us, but the differences are not so huge when you look closely at the ways they look after their young.

A few weeks ago I wrote about dolphins' births, and how they are sometimes attended and assisted by close relatives of the mother. In this post I am looking at how dolphins nurse and carry their young.

Dolphins breastfeed their babies for around two to three years. The mother usually weans her calf when she is pregnant with a subsequent baby, but a calf has been observed nursing up to the age of ten. Like other intelligent mammals, the mother-baby bond seems to be very important and mothers only leave their calves when they need to find food. Even when they are apart, they use sound and echo-location to remain in touch.

Dolphins do not have protruding mammary glands like primates, but evolution has found a way for them to breastfeed and remain streamlined in the water. The mother's nipples are hidden within slits on her belly. A baby dolphin must locate the nipples and latch on with its mouth, forming a tight seal that prevents any salt water from mixing with the milk. Dolphins obviously need to go to the surface to breathe, so a mother helps her newborn baby by lying on her side near the surface so that the calf can feed safely, close to an air supply. As the calf gets older, it is able to find the nipple without such assistance.

The act of releasing the milk, which we call let-down in humans, is under the voluntary control of the mother dolphin. The milk is richer and fattier then human milk, meaning that dolphin calves do not need to spend as much time feeding as human babies. Newborn calves feed around four times per hour but each session lasts for a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Infant carrying is seen in all land-dwelling primates, and ocean-dwelling manatees and sea-otters also physically carry their young in the water. So it is no surprise that dolphins have evolved a method of "carrying" their offspring. When the babies are very young, the mother-calf pairs swim in "echelon" position with the young dolphin by its mother's side. It is thought that the flow of water around the pair's body creates pressure that keeps the infant close to its mother and helps to propel it along in the water. Older calves swim in "infant" position below their mothers where they have better access to the nipples and are possibly given more protection from predators.



I think it's astounding how many similarities there are between the ways dolphins care for their young and what we humans do. As I wrote last time, we both have assistants attending childbirth (at least some of the time) and, if we are behaving as biology intends, we nurse our babies for similar lengths of time. For the majority of the global population, baby carrying is the normal method to transport a human infant. And though they do not have arms and legs, dolphins also have a way to carry their young. Most importantly, we both form close mother-infant bonds that last many years before a youngster is ready to leave the care of its immediate family.

Although we walk on land and dolphins swim in the sea, there are clearly many behaviours that bind us together.

What Would An Inuit Mother Do?

It sure is snowy around here. We've got ten inches sitting in the back garden and more forecast over the weekend. Pushing a buggy is impossible unless a snowplough precedes you. But what do the Inuit do in such conditions?



Oh I see, they babywear! It works for people the world over, and it's working great for me too. Carrying my daughter in a backpack is allowing us both to get out in the gorgeous snowy outdoors and we even help to keep each other warm. I admit that I fell on my bum a few days ago, but with her legs tucked either side of my body she was completely safe.

And just because I love snow, here's a snow picture taken in our local park:



Happy New Year to everyone.

Carrying Quandary

So, carried babies are supposed to prefer slings to pushchairs, right? They reject the remote machine-like trolley in favour of the warm, loving, organic sling? My faith in this principle has, I admit, been a little shaken.

I have had a poorly tummy for a couple of weeks and when I became well enough to go out with Cave Baby, I still didn't fancy having the not inconsiderable weight of an almost-fifteen-month-old baby bearing down on my back. So, with some hesitation, I dusted off our pushchair and strapped her into it. Now, this was not something I did lightly - in fact I think my ears were still ringing with her anguished cries from the day, almost a year ago, when I took her into town shopping in her pushchair. God, it was an awful day. I walked up and down streets to get her to sleep (it didn't work), I fed her numerous times, I changed her nappy. Nothing stopped her crying. I came to the conclusion, all that time ago, that she just hated being so remote from me, and I carried her everywhere from that day on.

Fast forward a year and I have still resisted using a pushchair, even though she is approaching 24lbs. So when it was time to take the plunge, you can imagine my surprise when it quickly became clear that she was having a whale of a time. She waved at people, said "Boof" to dogs and didn't complain, not even once. After a few pushchair trips she seems to have become an enthusiastic convert, even going so far as to walk me into the dining room, point at the pushchair and say "That" in a way that leaves me in no doubt as to what she wants. A part of me is screaming "But what about your principles?" every time I take her out in it, whilst another part is just glad to have a rest from carrying her. I can't believe that after all I have said about the benefits of babywearing, I end up with a baby who prefers to be pushed!

If I had written this yesterday, the tale would have ended there, but this morning my baby was feeling poorly and I had to go out to run an errand with her. I took her in the pushchair thinking she might enjoy it, but it was only 20 minutes before she was complaining and asking to be carried. So, my little prercious, I think I understand things a little better now. When you are feeling well and full of energy, you like the novelty and independence of being pushed. But when you're a little bit under the weather and you want some mothering, you want to return to the safety of the sling. Ah, I feel vindicated after all.

Babywearing rocks but sometimes the pushchair is going to have to come out, if only for novelty value. I hope that it is the closeness that my baby has experienced over her first fifteen months that has given her the confidence to be a little further away from me now.

Nursing Wisdom

Welcome to the October Carnival of Breastfeeding! This month's theme is "What I Wish I Had Known..." and links to all the other posts in the carnival will appear below during the day. Enjoy reading them all.

There are two pieces of advice that would have totally changed the uncertain scary, sleep deprived early days with my daughter. They are simple tips yet I never read them in a book until I was given a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, eight months into my mothering adventures. So many mums I have talked to have agreed how useful these pieces of wisdom have been to them - in fact I have often wondered why they are not more widely advised. So, without further ado, here they are.

First: the best way to get your baby to nap and to get some sleep yourself is to lie down beside it, nurse it to sleep and allow yourself to rest with it until it wakes. This is so obvious, yet most of us believe we "should" put the baby down in a basket or crib and sleep on our own somewhere else. Every book advises new mothers to sleep when their babies sleep, but if you are breastfeeding in a chair and your baby nods off in your lap, what are you supposed to do? So, to any new mothers out there who are reading this: feel no guilt about cuddling up in bed with your little one for a gorgeous nap. Treasure every moment you get to spend in such a lovely yummy way. And get someone else to do the housework. (Even daytime naps like this count as co-sleeping, and as such, should be done safely. Though, it must be said, it is safer to intentionally co-sleep with your little one in a bed than to drop off on a sofa with the baby on your knee).

Secondly: get a sling that you can breastfeed in. Seriously, this changed my life. A sling is such a warm, cosy place for a baby to be, and when you add the comfort of suckling it becomes almost impossible for a baby not to settle down and sleep. What is so great about nursing a baby to sleep in a sling is that it untethers you from the sofa: whether the baby is awake, asleep or in the process of dropping off, you can wander about the house, go outside, use a computer or do whatever else that appeals. The sling also provides a familiar environment for the baby wherever you happen to be, so it will fall asleep more easily in strange surroundings. What is perhaps most useful for parents of spirited, high needs babies is the fact that it is easier to put a baby down without waking it when it is in a sling than when it is just being carried. And if you do manage to put your sleeping baby down, you can enjoy some precious moments of me-time because you should be able to slide your body out from within the sling without disturbing the baby. I found my ring sling incredibly useful for this and I still use it nowadays to hip-carry my 13 month old daughter. I am sure a stretchy wrap would be equally as good.

The fact that these simple tips, that can make such a difference, are omitted from standard childcare manuals amazes me. I think it owes a lot to our society's irrational fear of letting our babies control us that we are afraid to do such natural things as napping with our babies or carrying them around. So, without wishing to become some kind of annoying advice-giving know-it-all, I spread the word whenever I can (and almost always find someone who completely agrees with me, and, like me, can't understand why we all had to learn these things the hard way). May you, dear reader, have many happy and restful days with your baby.

Fancy Pancakes: Wish I'd Heard More Good Things
The Milk Mama: When breastfeeding begins badly, and what I should have done about it
Hobo Mama: What I wish I'd known when I started breastfeeding
My World Edenwild: What I Wish I'd Known Then: A Poem
Happy Bambino: I wish I had known then…that it wasn’t up to me alone
Three Girl Pile-Up: 4 things I wish I’d known about breastfeeding
Birth Activist: What I Wish I Would Have Known About Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Moms Unite!: You Don't Have to Grin and Bear It
Momma's Angel: What I Wish I’d Known Then – My List For Next Time
The Starr Family Blogg: I Wish I Would Have Known
Whozat: If I'd Known Then
Massachusetts Friends of Midwives: What I wish I’d known back then about breastfeeding
Fighting Frumpy: When Breastfeeding Feels Wrong
Breastfeeding Mums: 15 Breastfeeding Facts I Wish I'd Known as a First Time Breastfeeding Mum
Mum Unplugged: What I Wish I'd Known Then
Blacktating: Breastfeeding is life changing
Breastfeeding 1-2-3: Trust Yourself and Your Body

Why Human Babies Should Be Carried

Babywearing is becoming increasingly popular, but it is usually chosen for convenience and is rarely thought of as a biological necessity. However there is strong scientific evidence that human babies are biologically adapted to be carried, just like gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees, and that babywearing is the best way to meet our infants' needs.

Firstly, a human infant naturally assumes a bent-legged, curved-spine position that allows the baby to be carried astride its parent's hip. Baby apes adopt a startlingly similar position when laid down. Furthermore, a baby carried on a hip instinctively clings on by gripping its carrier's waist with its thighs. And humans may have lost their fur but babies retain the strong grip that allows their their ape cousins to hang onto their parents' coats. Even without our fur, have you ever noticed that human skin has a lovely non-slip quality that really helps support your baby's weight when you are naked and you are carrying a naked baby? The first time I took my baby into the shower I was amazed at how much easier it was to carry her without the bulkiness of clothes between us. Newborns even have reflexes that help them to maintain a strong grip on their parents' bodies. It has been shown that when a carried infant is startled, triggering a "Moro" reflex, its grip on its parent actually tightens.

Evidence for our carrying needs also comes from the composition of human breastmilk. Mammals that habitually leave their offspring alone (while out looking for food) have high-protein, high-fat milk and their babies feed very quickly. Their babies can be sustained by a quick feed every few hours. In contrast, species that produce low-protein, low-fat milk are also characterised by the extensive contact that takes place between a mother and her babies. Their young are carried or follow their mother if they can walk. These young also feed fairly continuously. Unsurprisingly, great apes and humans are examples of mammals that make low-fat, low-protein milk. Great apes do maintain constant contact between mother and babies, and do feed continuously. Biologically speaking, humans should.

A baby's distribution of body fat even contributes to the evidence in favour of carrying. Dark fat cells, that provide insulation, are more densely distributed on a baby's back than its front. A carried baby is therefore able to absorb heat from its parent on its front without losing too much warmth from its exposed back.

Finally, the facts that human babies defecate readily and cry when they are left alone support the theory that they expect to be carried by their parents. In species which are usually left alone, the young do not defecate without assistance to avoid creating smells which would be detectable by a predator. Similarly, they do not draw attention to themselves by crying when the parent is absent. Human babies can defecate and cry at will because they have evolved to be with a parent at all times.

So, babywearers, it seems you are not just making your life easier by carrying that heavy baby around with you. You are meeting your baby's biological needs for constant contact and company and you are providing the right conditions for your child to regulate its milk intake and maintain its body temperature. Next time you strap your baby on, you can do it with the confidence that you are meeting your baby's biological needs and expectations. And that can't be bad for a baby's first experience of life.

This information and more can be found in "Natural Parenting ― Back to Basics in Infant Care", a paper by Regine A. Schön and Evolutionary Psychology, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Enjoy!

Your Beco Becomes You

Who doesn't love babywearing? Since inspiration is still rather thin on the ground around here, I thought I would write a little about my Beco baby carrier.

The Beco is a soft structured carrier based on the design of a mei-tai, with adjustable straps and buckles. The baby sits in a pocket of fabric (so the baby is not in direct contact with the wearer, unlike a mei-tai) and there are shoulder straps, a waist belt and a chest belt. In addition there are two adjustable straps at the top of the pouch that allow you to change the depth of the pocket of fabric that the baby sits in.

When you get the Beco comfortable, it is really comfortable. Cave Baby weighs something like 23lbs now so carrying her is no picnic, but I can wear her for hours on my back in the Beco if I have to. I can certainly feel every one of her 23lbs, but I have never got sore shoulders or back pain from wearing it.

Although soft structured carriers should be among the easiest of slings to use, there is certainly an art to perfecting the weight distribution in the Beco. First of all you have to figure out whether to wear the waist belt on your waist or hips. Then there is the task of getting the baby to fit really snugly against your body: do you make the pouch smaller or tighten the shoulder straps? Or do you leave the shoulder straps looser and tighten the chest strap? It took me a month or so to work out how to get a front carry really comfortable. Then, when CB got too heavy to wear on my front, I had to figure everything out again for the back carry. Perhaps the complexity of the various straps is a blessing in disguise, for whilst it takes a while to get your head around the various different straps, they do mean that the carrier can be adjusted to suit any body type. We are very lucky that Cave Father and I are a very similar size.

Back carries are fairly straightforward. Now I can easily do it on my own, and while I was learning, I only (nearly) dropped my baby on her head in public once. There are several ways to get a baby on your back: you can put the baby in the carrier, sit it in a chair and pull it on like a backpack; you can put the baby in the carrier, rest it on your hip and swing it round to the back; or you can put the carrier on your front, insert the baby, then scoot the whole apparatus round to your back. I do the latter - it takes me a minute at most.

For anyone who has come across this while looking for information about getting a Beco really comfortable, here is my advice. Put the carrier on and put your baby in, making sure that its bottom slightly overhangs the waist strap. Loosen the shoulder straps and get the waist belt really tight, experimenting with moving it from your waist to your hips. When you feel that the waist belt is supporting the baby's weight and is secure, tighten the shoulder straps until you feel them beginning to take some of the weight off the waist belt (it's a bit like finding the biting point of a clutch). When you feel the weight shift, stop tightening. That should be you all set to go.

I don't know how the Beco compares to a really comfy wrap; I can't wrap my baby as tightly as I can get her in the Beco and as a result I find the Beco more comfortable, but I would imagine that a pro wrapper would probably disagree. But I have to say that I am really pleased with how comfortable it continues to be now that my baby is getting heavy.

If you are trying to decide between soft structured carriers, there are a couple more features that attracted me to the Beco. Firstly, it has a fabric panel that comes in loads of designs, so the carrier is actually quite pretty. Secondly, it has a little hood that fastens on to the carrier that can be used to keep the baby's head still when it falls asleep, or as a rain hood.

I gather that Becos are quite popular in the US but there are not many stockists here in the UK. We bought ours from a shop called Slumber-Roo (who are not paying me for a plug!). And now the bad news: if you want one, be prepared to wave goodbye to the best part of £100.

To be fair, I have not used any other SSC so I cannot tell how the US-made Beco would compare to a home-grown, cheaper SSC. But for us it has been a great purchase that has been used most days for the seven months we have had it, has washed well, and continues to be useful now. It is ideal for walking with your baby or toddler for long periods and it can be adjusted to fit any member of the family perfectly.

I Heart My Ring Sling

I am in the midst of a love affair... with my ring sling. It is just the most useful thing ever. I have a sling like this:



...but I covet one like this:



It is perfect for a quick trip out of the house, to the park or the shops. People can't resist talking to my baby because she's right there at eye level with them. When she gets tired in the house I just scoop her up and load her in the sling and she's pacified. I can clean, wash dishes and cook with her in it, and if there are knives about or the stove is on I just swing her round behind my arm where she can't reach anything. She associates the sling with going to sleep and she's usually off within ten minutes when I feed her down for her naps. I can pop it in my bag and take it out with me when I know I'm going to have to get her to sleep. She even slept through an entire airport experience, from check-in to boarding, in the comfort of her ring sling. And it must be easy to use, because even Cave Father has finally come round to using it.

It should be writ large in every baby book. Get yourself a ring sling! Your baby will love it, you will love carrying your baby in it, and it will make your life so much easier!

The Continuum Concept - Jean Liedloff

I scarcely felt I needed to read this book since I have seen so many quotes and reviews in all the attachment parenting literature that I have read. In fact I feel that it has become a bit of an attachment parenting cliche to justify any childcare practice by saying that the Yequana people of South America do it. But, nevertheless, rather than prejudging, I thought I should read the book and make up my own mind.

So, if you have not already heard of it, The Continuum Concept is one of the original attachment parenting texts: it is a parenting classic. It came out in 1975 after the author, Jean Liedloff, spent two and a half years living in the South American jungle with a tribe called the Yequana. She observed that they had a much greater sense of well-being than was customary in the West and, through her observations of their lifestyle, concluded that it was the way they raised their children that gave them this greater self esteem.

The idea of the "continuum concept" is basically to live the life that evolution prepared us for. She argues that evolution has honed humans to occupy a specific ecological niche and that in order to make the most of our bodies and minds, we need to live in the conditions that evolution has led us to expect. In particular, she says that if babies meet conditions that are not as they expected, they cannot fully develop and mature. The conditions that babies expect, she says, are constant carrying during the day and co-sleeping at night. The "in-arms" phase, as she calls it, lasts until the baby can crawl, from which point it should be allowed to explore its surroundings without restriction.

She goes on to describe how just about every human failing can be traced back to a break in an individual's continuum. Since virtually everyone in the West has a wonky continuum, due to an unfulfilled in-arms phase, we have totally lost sight of what "healthy" is. For us, "normal" is broken.

Actually I agree with her theory that in order to develop healthily, we should bring up our babies as our ancestors did. I think she is quite right that it must be damaging to live outside of the niche that we evolved to occupy. At the very least, it must make it very difficult for us to completely fulfill our potential. Humans are designed to be carried as babies and we are designed to co-sleep (why else would we synchronise our breathing with our parents?). Cots and prams are modern inventions which are totally baby-unfriendly, but to say so out loud in Britain is to be looked upon as some kind of weird extremist.

However, if I wanted to be cynical about this book then there is a lot to be cynical about. For a start, how does she know that the Yequana people are happy because of their childhoods? Could it not be because of the food they eat or the surroundings they live in? Everything about their lives is so very different to ours that our differences cannot be pinned down just to our childrearing techniques. Her arguments really hit the buffers when she admits that the neighbouring Sanema tribe, who also live by the continuum, have a habit of raiding their nearby villages, stealing their women and slaughtering their menfolk. I can see why she kept that one quiet until the end of the book. But I suspect that if I voiced my misgivings to Jean Liedloff she would say, "Ah, but you would say that because your continuum is broken so you don't understand." She really has the perfect argument - everyone in the West is damaged so none of us are qualified to disagree with her.

The book might be flawed but that doesn't really matter, because it has provided a great talking point for over 30 years, and I am sure that Jean Liedloff is quite satisfied with that. It might not be a cast iron theory, but she planted a seed that has grown into attachment parenting with its central tenets of babywearing, co-sleeping and breastfeeding. As a scientific argument, it didn't really work for me. But as a piece of history, as a hugely influential text, it was definitely worth reading. If you have seen the quotes and heard the theory then I would recommend giving the original book a go.

Have Attached Baby, Will Travel

Attachment parenting is not as difficult as some people make out. It is so natural, and it makes life with a baby easier in many ways. For example, when a baby is carried or worn, a parent can go wherever they like as long as it is accessible on foot. There are loads of jobs around the house, like vacuuming and mowing the lawn, that a baby in a sling will really enjoy. Breastfeeding can be tough to establish but in time offers ultimate convenience. There is no bottle cleaning, no sterilising, no waiting for the milk to warm. A breastfeeding mother does not need to worry about being caught out with nothing for her baby to eat. And co-sleeping is the bedtime arrangement that, for thousands of years, has allowed mothers to get enough sleep. Without the disturbance of getting out of bed in the night, adults do not fully wake up so they can get back to sleep much more quickly after a night feed.

But attachment parenting practices come into their own when the family travels away from home. This is when the advantages really begin to stack up. And here they are:

Babywearing
Public transport is so much easier without a pushchair that car-free holidays become feasible. Travelling with just a sling or two cuts down on the amount of luggage you need to take, and makes it simpler to use buses, trains and planes. Getting through airport security is much more straightforward when you are not wielding a pushchair. The sling also provides a familiar haven for a child in unfamiliar surroundings, which can be a godsend when trying to get a baby to go to sleep.

Breastfeeding
There are so many advantages to breastfeeding when travelling that I don't know where to start. On long journeys, breastmilk is a permanently available foodstuff that needs no preparation and cannot be accidentally forgotten. Even older babies who eat solids will be satisfied with breastmilk until some solid food can be found. Suckling on a plane is useful to help babies' ears adjust to pressure changes, and the other passengers might be grateful for the breasts' quietening powers. A breastfeeding mother does not need to pack bottles, sterilising equipment or formula - this means she can travel lighter and has more flexibility in the types of accommodation she can use. Mum Kay McFerrin says:

"Thanks to breastfeeding, our little girl was a delightful travel companion. Monica was six months old [when she travelled], and still on just mother's milk. All she needed for the trip was her mother, some diapers, and a bathing suit... I had no worries such as what to do if the room doesn't have a refrigerator, or what if I don't take enough formula, or how will I warm the bottles, or how to take formula and feed baby away from the hotel." (The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, p86)

Co-sleeping
For any baby, home is wherever mum and dad are. But at night, in a strange cot in a strange room, it must be very frightening for a baby on holiday. Put that baby in bed with its parents and a night away from home becomes the same as any other night, and a welcome retreat into familiarity after the excitement of the day. Co-sleeping is so convenient for the parents as well. There is no need to worry about finding accommodation with a cot, or carrying a travel cot. As long as there is somewhere for the adults to sleep, there is somewhere for the baby to sleep too. Deborah Jackson has written:

"A child who sleeps with his parents at home can sleep with his parents anywhere. Strange surroundings do not prevent him dozing off, because his parents are not strange, and they are the most important constant in his life." (Three in a Bed, p240)

So there you have it - attachment parenting and travel are eminently compatible. Though I came to attachment parenting as a way to calm my fretful, demanding baby, I am utterly convinced that it is the most practical way for me to bring up my baby.

I fully intend to make the most of the advantages of attachment parenting when I take our family on holiday next week. If you're an old pro at this travelling-with-baby thing, I'd love your tips in the comments.

Photo credit: blogs.babiesonline.com

What Apes Can Teach Us Pt II

My original question (in my last post, What Apes Can Teach Us) was whether a baby would take longer to develop the ability to sit up, crawl and walk if left to its own devices; that is, if it was looked after, but not encouraged to reach the next goal by being sat upright, placed on its stomach or put in a baby walker. As I said in the last post, it is probably impossible to answer this question without conducting unethical and unpalatable trials on identical twins. But I wondered if a likely answer might be obtained by observing the parenting strategies of our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, the great apes. Actually I'm not sure I have got any further with the original question but a cursory bit of research on orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees did yield some fascinating truths about how they bring up their babies - and perhaps how ours should be raised. In particular, I looked at nursing, weaning, baby carrying and sleeping habits. I will cover each in turn but first I think it is necessary to establish whether it is valid to assume that without the influence of society, the behaviour of a human towards its child would resemble that of an ape towards its offspring. Here is my view: a human is a very similar organism to a gorilla, a chimpanzee or an orangutan. Presumably, evolution has ensured that an adult ape instinctively behaves in such a way that its baby has the best possible chance of survival. Since our physiology is so similar, human babies have very similar basic needs to great ape babies. So it seems reasonable to assume that the "optimal" behaviour for a great ape parent would be similar to the "optimal" behaviour for a human parent. No, not identical, but there is surely enough similarity that we can at least think about what apes do, and use it to inform what might be best for our babies. Of course it should be instinctive for humans to behave optimally when raising their children, but unfortunately our minds are clouded with memories of our own upbringing, well-meant advice and so-called expert guidance. Even if we behave in a natural, instinctive way (such as taking our babies to bed) we often feel like we are doing something wrong. Anyway, on to the topics mentioned above.

Nursing

Katherine Dettwyler wrote a PhD dissertation on the natural length of time for humans to nurse, by studying nursing in great apes. She used a variety of methods to scale up the ape nursing periods; this yielded various periods of human nursing from 2.5 years to 7 years. My brief research showed that great apes nurse for around 3-4 years. So it would seem that "extended nursing" in humans is really normal nursing for our species.

Weaning on to solid food

Great apes begin eating bits of vegetation or fruit, as appropriate for their diet, at around 3 months of age. This is not really that different to human babies - Cave Baby certainly started grabbing food out of my hands at about that age. Whilst I presume that most of the eating that infant apes do is "baby-led", ie they pick it up themselves and put it in their own mouths, I have read that orangutans sometimes chew up some fruit before giving it to their babies. This would seem to provide some justification for the human practice of mashing foods. Perhaps the most "natural" weaning route for humans to take is a mixture of mashed and finger foods, right from the beginnig of weaning, with babies primarily self-feeding.

Baby Carrying

Apes have an advantage when carrying their babies - they have fur, and the babies quickly become strong enough to hold on to the fur. They carry the babies on their fronts constantly for several months (around 6 or more), and when the babies become too heavy, they move to their parents' backs. Since apes use their fur both to keep warm and to carry their young, it makes some sense that humans would make clothes both to insulate them and to carry young. So, without the benefit of fur, perhaps carrying babies in slings is the most natural thing for a human mother to do.

Sleeping

Sleeping with young is so natural and instinctive that it scarcely needs any more explanation; but great apes do indeed sleep with their children for a number of years. It seems from the reading I did that shared sleeping lasts until nursing finishes; perhaps this is a guide as to when human co-sleeping should end - with the end of nursing comes independence and the beginning of a "juvenile" rather than "infant" period of life.

I do not wish this to read like a recipe for how anybody should be bringing up their children. Humans are successful partly because we have society and culture, so societal norms themselves may grant us some advantage that improves survival. But anyone who has chosen to follow their own parental instincts, perhaps baby-wearing or co-sleeping, may recognise a lot of their methods in those used by orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees.

Oh, and to answer my original question - apes are carried almost constantly until they can walk, so I reckon human babies would still learn to crawl and walk without hot housing.

What Apes Can Teach Us Pt I

After watching Cave Baby sitting up, I found myself wondering if her development is affected by anything we as parents do. If she had not spent many happy hours sitting in her Bumbo, would she have taken longer to sit unsupported? If she had been carried less and left to play on the floor, would she have sat up more quickly? If a baby was always carried in a sling would it learn to sit up at the same time as it would have done if it spent more time supporting its own body? The acquisition of new skills is due to a combination of muscle development and brain development but my question really is: is this development innate (so the muscles and brain would develop in the same way regardless of the experiences of the child) or is it learnt (so development would be dependent on practice)? Or, as is more likely, is it a combination of the two? The answer to this question has implications for standard advice given to mothers, such as to let baby have plenty of kicking time on its back, and later to have tummy time to allow baby develop its muscles for crawling. I have always had an inkling that these pieces of advice are based on nothing more than popular wisdom but I am willing to be proven otherwise.

On the one hand, many animals' young are born with the ability to walk. The muscular and brain development necessary for this clearly takes place in the womb and was hard coded into the animal's DNA. So it may be the case that humans are also hard-coded to walk and that in time, every child will walk irrespective of the input of its parents. Or, on the other hand, are we different? Since our ability to learn is so much more advanced than that of cows, deer and sheep, have we abandoned this hard-coding in favour of gaining skills through learning? In an effort to investigate these questions I carried out a brief bit of research on the development of infants of our closest genetic relatives - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Assuming that their childcare methods are primarily based on instinct, rather than societal norms as human methods currently are, how do their young "learn" to sit up and walk?

Though I probably could not answer my original nature/nurture question without running highly unethical trials with pairs of identical twins, I did find some fascinating things out about our ape cousins. To begin with gestation - we all share very similar periods of gestation (gorilla - 8.5 months; orangutan - 8.5 months; chimpanzee - 7.5 months). It has been suggested that human babies are born at a relatively immature stage compared to other large mammals due to the difficulty of birthing our large heads through our twisted birthing canals; however great ape babies are also born fairly helpless. Newborn orangutans cannot even raise their own heads and certainly neither chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans can sit or stand up. However all have a strong grasping reflex (like human babies) and have the innate ability to hang on to their mothers' bodies, though all require additional support from the mother at first. Chimpanzees are then carried almost continuously for 5 months, gorillas for 6 months and orangutans for longer. The carrying period lasts until walking begins (at least for gorillas and chimpanzees - orangutans move primarily using their arms and hands). Chimpanzees walk at around 6 months and gorillas at around 8 months. During this carrying period, great ape babies develop much more quickly than human babies. The actual development depends to some extent on the characteristics of the species, but for example the infant orangutan learns to sit up at around 2 weeks, and the infant gorilla crawls at 9 weeks.

It is no surprise that all apes sleep with their infants for security and convenience. For orangutans, nest sharing goes on for at least 3 years - around the same time period that infants nurse for. Chimpanzees remain in contact with their mothers both night and day and nurse until around 4 years. Gorillas also nest share for the nursing period which lasts around 3 years. A silverback, the dominant male in a group, has even been documented sharing his nest with an orphaned infant. Although nursing lasts a long time, consumption of solid food does begin early for all these animals. Orangutans eat soft fruits at around 3 months (which their mothers apparently chew for them first) and gorillas begin to eat vegetation at 2.5 months.

I hope that any readers of this are already beginning to draw their own conclusions about what natural, instinctive human childcare would really be like if we were not so strongly influenced by so much ill-founded advice. Click here for the second part of this post.

First Back Carry in a Beco

A day of firsts - first time Cave Baby has sat up unaided and managed to entertain herself for an extended period (about half an hour) and her first back carry in our new Beco Baby carrier. Prompted by this discussion on mothering.com we saddled up Cave Father and took a trip to the shops with baby clinging to his back like a little monkey. His verdict? Very comfortable, much more comfortable than carrying a 7.5 kg rucksack, once an issue with the front chest strap hitting his collarbone had been sorted. Cave Baby's verdict? Well she fell asleep in it after half an hour and woke up on the doorstep, so I think that is a baby's equivalent of a thumbs up. And nobody looked at us strangely even in the Post Office queue! So a resounding success. nb The picture is not me (I wish it was).

In Defence of Crotch Danglers

As I get more and more into the whole attachment parenting thing, and the associated websites (you'd have to go a long way from where I live to find real life people who practice it), I keep coming across forum discussions about spotting babywearers out and about (like this one for example). There is almost always a comment about how rubbish the Baby Bjorn type carriers are - either the baby looks uncomfy, or they don't distribute weight properly across your back, or the baby will grow up deformed because its weight is on its spine and crotch. I find these postings at their best to be intolerant, and at their worst to be scornful. For anyone who was lucky enough to be educated about babywearing before they had their first child - good for you. However, the path to attachment parenting, for most of us, began with a fractious, unputdownable baby and a visit to Mothercare to see what we can carry it with.

Although I now use a ring sling and a mei-tai type carrier, I have carried Cave Baby for most of her life in a bog standard Mothercare front loading baby carrier and I have had absolutely no problems with it. It has rather a lot of buckles (seven to do up for each carry!) but the shoulder straps cross at the back, spreading the weight nicely across your back, whilst the waist belt takes the rest of the load. Cave Baby has never complained about being carried in it and has gone to sleep easily - in fact in her early colicky days it was virtually the only way to calm her. The Mothercare carrier can, in theory, be used as a back carrier as well, but it is not as good in this configuration and hence we decided to invest in a soft structured carrier that will last until baby is well into her toddling years.

Anybody who genuinely loves babywearing and wants to encourage others to do it must surely accept that most people will not venture beyond their high street to find baby carriers, and it is surely better for a baby to be carried in a Baby Bjorn than to be deposited in a pram. So please, if you see a passer-by with their baby in a mainstream high street carrier then give them a big smile, show off your own babywearing equipment but above all make them feel confident about the parenting choice they have made.

Picture courtesy of Mothercare website.

How We Put Baby To Bed

And the solution to our baby settling problems? A ring sling! Here it is: our Huggababy (the picture is from their website www.huggababy.co.uk and I am sure they won't mind me using it as I am plugging their product).

After a brief routine of sleepsuit, sleeping bag and songs or story, Cave Baby is inserted into the sling and breastfed to sleep. The sling shields her from stuff going on around her, so I can watch TV without distracting her. It is so comfy for her, like a cocoon, that she drops off to sleep really easily despite the fact that she never normally sleeps when fed in the living room. If necessary I can stand up and walk around with her, still feeding, to give her that extra tip over the edge into oblivion. I have even done this with in-laws around because it hides your breast so well, they never even know it is out! Fantastic. Finally, I can ease the baby down into her car-seat (her sleeping location of choice - a cot is just too flat) and remove myself from the sling without disturbing her. It's not a miracle worker - she still has nights when she wakes every 30 minutes - but she will usually settle simply by being lifted up, still in the sling, and jiggled about a bit.

It has been a fabulous buy because I use it around the house in hip-seat position as well. Cave Baby loves seeing what I am up to and I can get on with jobs with both hands without the baby positioned cumbersomely in front of me as she would be in a front-carrying sling.

Like co-sleeping, I would never have anticipated before Cave Baby's birth that I would be walking about the house with baby slung around my neck. But it feels so natural and right and my baby adores it.

How Not To Put Baby To Bed

I have always felt a bit guilty about not having a proper bath/book/lights out routine for Cave Baby. She has never gone to bed at 7pm (why would you do that unless you want a 6am alarm call?). In an effort to deal with Cave Baby's early sleeping difficulties I consulted many books and websites but all gave advice tailored to the traditional put-child-in-cot-at-7pm model. How do "normal" bedtime routines translate to a co-sleeping family?

At first, I needed to spend about as much time in bed as baby did. That worked great - I went to bed at around 9pm and got up 12 or 13 hours later. Going to bed at the same time as baby was fine to begin with but as our sleep improved, we began to long for some mummy and daddy time in the evening. So how do you get a baby to go to bed before its mum (without pushing it round the block in a pram or walking it in a sling, both of which are impractical in sub-zero winter of 2009 temperatures)?

We started a mini bedtime routine - sleepsuit, a song or a book (if baby's disposition allowed) and then a feed. In every book or website I could find, it would then simply be a matter of nursing baby to sleep in bed and creeping away. Oh dear. Cave Baby's not falling for that! Over a period of weeks, here is what we tried to get her to go to sleep and stay asleep: nursing to sleep and laying her down in a bedside cot (yeah, right); nursing to sleep and laying her in her car-seat (no chance mate); nursing to sleep in bed then creeping away (5 minutes sleep if you are lucky); nursing to sleep in bed then sticking a dummy in her mouth (pointless); rocking/bouncing to sleep then laying down (20 minutes peace if she didn't wake up on the put-down, but a sore aching back too). Needless to say, we did not consider controlled crying to be an option.

Cave Baby has seriously tested our ingenuity and patience on this one, and for anyone recognising their own little darling in this post, and perhaps still stuck in the horrible trying anything (and nothing working) phase, we have emerged victorious (most nights). But Cave Baby is rioting now, so... solution tomorrow.

If Your Baby Loves Being Carried Then Carry It

Babywearing - a slightly strange hippy kind of term. It takes something simple like carrying a baby and elevates it to a kind of lifestyle choice. Do I babywear? I'm not sure how I would measure up against the vegetarian, hemp wearing Earth Mother brigade but I do use slings in preference to a pushchair, and around the house. And there's a major reason - babies love it! A simple walk to the shops becomes a dazzling slideshow of colours and sounds to a baby carried front-facing at adult height. You wouldn't believe how fascinating a hip-slung baby finds washing up, teeth cleaning and vacuuming. Your normal day to day jobs become entertainment to the carried baby, and when she goes to sleep, you get to do something fun instead of squeezing chores in.

A baby naturally wants to be carried a lot. This makes a lot of sense - being so helpless on its own, it is the safest place to be. It also gets to stay snuggly and warm and, if carried by its mother, close to a source of food. There is an odd pressure in society to put babies down as much as possible to help them learn independence. However, without going deeply into the subject here, it has been shown time and time again that babies whose needs are met do grow up into independent adults - it is the babies made to feel insecure who grow up with problems.

I would not be without my Mothercare front carrier (yep, Mothercare) or my ring sling now and anyone whose baby is a bit colicky or just hates being put down would be well advised to try strapping one of these on and seeing the effect on baby. It's just another way that behaving as nature intended makes life so much easier.

Mothering a Cave Baby

Why Cave Mother? Well, six months on from giving birth to a beautiful daughter I have wasted far too much time worrying about how to bring her up and I have made a key realisation - millions of years of evolution have handed me a finely tuned motherly instinct. If I make my decisions based on my instinct, rather than the advice of a parenting manual, then I will be making the decision that evolution has guided me to make in order to increase my baby's chances of survival. In other words, do what a cave woman would have done. Seriously, if you ask yourself the question "what would a cave woman have done?" then things become so much simpler.

OK I know I'm generalising here, and cynics can point to many flaws in the argument above, but the fact is that parenting in Britain today is largely based on a set of arbitrary rules invented by Victorians just over 100 years ago. Before that time it was normal to feed babies on demand, sleep them in their parents' bed and carry them in their carer's arms (just like most other mammals on earth). Six months ago I was all ready with the pram and the cot, preparing to follow the accepted model of childcare just as the vast majority of mothers in this country do. But something went wrong - nobody told my baby that the rules had changed. Nobody told her how to stay asleep in a cot, without the warmth of her mother beside her. Nobody told her how to lie quietly in a pram, staring at the sky, without the comforting bouncy sensation of a human step. Nobody told her how to go for more than an hour or two between feeds. So I was forced to adopt frowned-upon practices like sleeping with my baby, giving unlimited access to the breast, and carrying her around with me. And the result? She is now a happy baby and I am, at last, a happy mum. But I have spent months feeling like a failure and it is only now that I have come to fully understand that the social norm for childcare in this country is not necessarily the best for all our children.

I know that I will continue to find it difficult to deviate from the norm without questioning my decisions, and I hope that I might be able to offer some support to other parents who can't shake the feeling that their baby was just not made for cots and prams.