Elizabeth Baldwin asks for support for the notion that attachment begins
before birth, also from the baby's side.

Babies do show very clear and distinct responses to the voices of their
parents and siblings the FIRST time they hear these sounds outside the womb.
They respond with increased alertness, a widening of the eyes and a turning
toward the sound, in a way that is noticeably different from how they
respond to voices of staff, or extraneous sounds in the room.  This
difference persists over the first days and can be used to great advantage
in hospital settings in helping mothers and fathers realize how much they
mean to the baby.

I know one baby whose siblings were not present when she was born.  She was
born at home.  She seemed to recognize the sound of the family's new kitten
meowing OUTSIDE THE HOUSE half an hour after birth.  She was exceptionally
alert the first hours after birth, even for an unmedicated baby, and did not
seem upset in any way.  When her sibs came home, she was in her mother's
arms at the door, and when they spoke to her for the first time, she SMILED.
The mother said she looked almost relieved.  Like 'Where have you guys BEEN
since I got here, anyway?'

This is inferential evidence for attachment, I know.  I think babies in
order to survive would bond with whoever is available, especially if it were
the same person or family who consistently provided care.  But I am
convinced they are 'primed' to focus on the sounds they've heard before
birth, as well as the smells (amniotic fluid smells different from mother to
mother, and the baby will recognize its mother on the basis of scent, too).
We don't know what, if any, distress it causes babies if they do not meet
what they were expecting when they do emerge from the womb.  It's hard to
ask them, then and there, but we can see that babies simply laid in cots for
the first two hours post partum, spend more time crying than do babies laid
on their mothers.  We haven't done a controll group with babies laid on the
chests of strangers, and I hope no one has plans to, either.

Newborn babies will also react more strongly to music they have heard in the
womb.  The first time I observed this myself, it gave me goose bumps.  There
is so much we don't know, and we have done so many silly things in our
ignorance.  I wish I believed all those silly things were well meant, but I
don't.

In another context I have been reading old nursing and midwifery texts (to
see what they say about timing of the first feeding).  I think that is why I
have trouble believing in the good intentions of staff.  Gabrielle Palmer's
claim that institutionalizing birth has never, anywhere, anytime, been shown
to benefit breastfeeding, is even more credible after reading this stuff.

Cheers
Rachel Myr
posting from a different address as I am at work in Oslo all week

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