A new study has found that moms will send their baby “soothing signals” to help calm them down when they are upset. If there are a few things that we know about babies, we know that they eat, sleep, poop, and cry. Infants cry a lot, and that is because it is their only way of communicating with mom and dad that they need something. It is now up to mom to try and figure out what her baby needs, and this can be frustrating at times if mom cannot figure it out, and she just wants her baby to be at peace.
Studies into infant and child development are telling us a lot about the bond and connection between mother and baby, and it may have just found out something amazing. According to Medical Xpress, a new study has shown how mothers calm their babies down with soothing signals, and they may not even realize they are doing it.
The study was done by York University, and it can be read in full here. It wanted to look into the known fact that when a baby is upset, mom has some kind of superpower that enables her to calm her baby down. Something that not everyone can do.
Mothers can take their babies and cuddle them, and speak some words and the baby is magically calm, and researchers wanted to know if there was a biological explanation for this.
They also wanted to see if this was different in mothers who were suffering from postpartum depression and if they may struggle to calm their baby down when upset. Previous studies have already shown that mothers with PPD may have a harder time calming their baby down, but it is not known how these “soothing signals” are disrupted in women with PPD.
Researchers looked at this link by watching mothers and infants interact when the baby was upset, or in a state of distress. They put mother-baby pairs through three phases of interaction. There was a play phase, a still-face phase, and a reunion phase.
In the play phase, mothers would interact and play with their infants, and then they would get a “poker face,” and the baby would get upset, and then the mother would go back to the play phase to see if it would soothe the baby.
Researchers found changes in the heart rate of mom, and this was the link that was responsible for the soothing signal that they were sending the baby.
Sources: Medical Xpress, APA PsycNet