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Distraction and Breastfed Babies
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By Yvette O'Dowd
In the beginning, it is enough for the newborn brain to channel reflexes and instincts into seeking and finding the breast. Latching successfully and effectively removing milk takes all their focus. They commonly close their eyes while feeding, with occasional deep gazes into their mother's eyes. With all that going on, their mother is also fully engaged by the act of breastfeeding, with little headspace to do anything else at the same time!
Over the early months, as milk removal and supply synchronise and everyone involved can relax a bit more, feed times can become a mix of engagement between mother and child when the baby is in an alert state, or downtime for mum as baby relaxes at the breast during long, leisurely breastfeeds. This is the season of binge-watching series, devouring books or enjoying a nap as you lie down in bed to feed. But change is coming.
As babies evolve out of the fourth trimester, the first three months of life outside the womb, they quite literally broaden their horizons. The world beyond the bubble of breast and mother begins to intrude. With new brain development comes new awareness and the age of distraction begins. Usually around the four-month mark, early signs can appear from around 12 weeks. Fussiness while attaching, shorter feeds and coming off and on a bit more often during a feed. The peak of the first distracted stage is four to five months.
The maturing brain appears to at first accept all sensory input as relevant before reaching the stage of filtering out what doesn't require their attention. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) kicks in and every sound and movement needs to be checked out. Even the silent swipe on your phone will be noticed.
If you try to eat, have a conversation or take advantage of your spare hand, your baby will stop to watch. Or even grumble! Feeding in busy environments or around the rest of your family becomes a challenge.
This disruption also affects sleep as the slightest disturbance can lead to full waking. And when it comes to putting the baby down to play while you do some essential task? Well, now is a great time to embrace babywearing, because you will probably only get a few moments at best!
Often these changes in behaviour are blamed on other things: Teething, signs of needing solids or that the breastmilk supply has decreased. Infant development is not always considered, yet is nearly always related. Babies are always working on future projects, way before we see the results.
A four-month-old baby has a central nervous system hard-wiring for walking and downloading updates for sitting and crawling. All this is running in the background and disrupting regular patterns that you have become used to.
Babies in the first year are developing at a rate never seen again in their lifetime. Beginning in a completely helpless state, within one year they progress towards walking and talking. Although another period of disruption occurs as the final quarter kicks in.
Around 9-10 months, many familiar signs of distraction appear again. This time, the cause is an inner drive to move. By this age, typical development has seen crawling, sitting up and standing which are taking up a lot of a baby's focus. Working on these is physically and mentally demanding and babies once again are fussier, wakeful and distracted. They will even disturb their own sleep by practising movement, to the point of standing up in their sleep and waking up because they can't sit down! Research has shown sleep disturbance increases in the month before crawling and for the three months following. We can assume the more complex skills of standing and walking are a factor here, too. Speech development will have its turn in the spotlight during the second year, with 21 months typically the time of a vocabulary explosion almost overnight!
The lack of interest in breastfeeding which often comes around 9 months can be mistaken for self-weaning although there is no evidence to support this. More likely it is a period of breast refusal, potentially related to discomfort from teeth moving in the gums and erupting. Similar behaviour can be seen around 15 months. So the common ages for breast refusal are 4, 9 and 15 months.
It is important to note that babies who are not breastfed also go through all these developmental stages. Changing what or how you feed your baby won't make any difference!
Yvette O’Dowd is not your typical grandmother! This mother of three and 'Granny' of three has been a breastfeeding counsellor since 1992. In 2014, Yvette established the Southern Natural Parenting Network, incorporating South Eastern Babywearing Group. With 11,000 members world-wide, the group supports parents interested in breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, baby-led weaning and modern cloth nappies and other aspects of gentle, natural parenting.
