Your Baby Skin to Skin

Learn to trust your baby’s instincts in the first year

Your Baby Skin to Skin gives parents a fresh, empowering approach to parenting. It takes parents on a reassuring and practical journey through your baby’s first year. You are invited to contemplate your baby from a different perspective from the usual. One which can bring calm and solace along with many "lightbulb moments" of recognition. This book has at its heart the delightful truth that your baby is a highly evolved human, pre-set instinctively to survive. You can simply step back and let your baby show you how to parent by understanding the inbuilt reflexes and instinctive cues. Instincts are not learned, need no practice and can never be wrong. After all, no-one taught us to sneeze, we can't get better at sneezing through practice and we can't sneeze "wrong"! Likewise, a newborn baby comes ready-primed to feed, sleep and learn perfectly well and cannot get these things wrong, so turn down your anxiety and learn from your little instinctive expert. Taken from conversations with thousands of parents over 30 years, Your Baby Skin to Skin speaks about the real baby before your eyes. Not some mythical creature you have yet to meet. It reflects you as a real parent and releases you from the need to wrestle with your baby's nature and instead, allow yourself to sink naturally together into parenthood. By stepping back, accepting that your baby really can't get the business of being a baby wrong, you can finally rid yourself of the need to teach your newborn the basics of life. Parenting can be about watching evolution unfold before your eyes, safe in the knowledge that there are millions of years of natural selection wrapped up in your child and you ensuring that both of you will respond to each other naturally and correctly. So, don't panic. All is as it should be. Millions of years of evolution have got us here safely and now you can relax and get to know your baby.