Is excess cervix bad for the baby?

What makes a mother wonder if lap is bad for the baby🇧🇷 What kind of harm would excess cervix do? If the answer is “he can become ill-accustomed”, we should ask: ill-accustomed to what?

Physical contact invested with affection is essential for the development of the baby. We constitute ourselves as human beings in relation to the other. As the human baby is born completely dependent on care, this extreme initial dependence makes a constant relationship of affection and care between the baby and an adult who accompanies him most of the time very important. In our culture, this role usually falls to the mother. The way she spends her care and projects her child’s future marks the child for the rest of her life.

Giving a baby transmits many things at the same time: security, protection, affection, love and even the limits of your body. It is in the arms of the adult that the newborn discovers that he has a beginning and an end, since, at birth, he does not yet know that he is a person separated from the mother.

Don’t be afraid to hold your baby. He won’t get slick or bad used to it. He understands the “manha” as a request, a way of saying that something is missing. So why not pick him up and comfort him? It is important to ask yourself “what” is triggering your fear. It is possible that the pressure to hold her child a little is related to the demands she faces. Having to work, many mothers want their babies to be independent very early so that they don’t “suffer” from the separation. This feeling leads to attempts to make the baby fall asleep on its own before 7 months and to take off diapers under 2 years. Forcing the acquisition of such skills ahead of time may even be possible, but it will certainly have an emotional cost.

Women of the current generation, independent and accustomed to leading an autonomous life, feel more the burden of responsibility for caring for another being over a long period. You don’t have to be the only one taking care of the baby. If possible, share the chores with your husband, grandmothers, a nanny or even a daycare center. And give him a good base of affection, convey security, demonstrate that you have faith in his development.

The only context in which “excess” holding can be harmful is when it mirrors an unbalanced mother-father-baby relationship. Maybe the couple is not working well or pulling away sexually. In this case, the lap may have acquired the secondary function of separating the couple, placing the baby between them, or even supplying the affection that should exist between the father and the mother. This is why the mother is totally immersed in the fascination she feels for her baby, leaving aside other aspects of her life as a woman, partner, professional. But even then, it’s not the amount of lap that causes the problem… The movements of this dance have to be in tune: falling in love and breaking up will give the baby the conditions to grow up healthy. Now, imagine, if even adults need a lap, what will the baby say?

Source: Rohenkohl is a psychoanalyst specializing in baby psychopathology