The study’s lead researcher Dr. Nathalie Maitre told Science Daily, “Making sure that preterm babies receive positive, supportive touch such as skin-to-skin care by parents is essential to help their brains respond to gentle touch in ways similar to those of babies who experienced an entire pregnancy inside their mother’s womb.”
Dr. Maitre advocated for hospitals to strongly encourage and help facilitate skin-to-skin contact between newborns and parents and said that in a case where the parent could not provide this, it would be wise and beneficial for hospitals to “consider occupational and physical therapists to provide a carefully planned touch experience, [which is] sometimes missing from a hospital setting.”
So, mamas and daddies, the bottom line is: you can’t spoil that baby by holding him or her too much. So get on with your parental instincts and cuddle the daylights out of your little sweeties! Their beautiful baby brains will be ALL the better for it, and will the parent-child bond. And hey, if brother and sister are game, they can get skin to skin with your baby, too and get the sibling bonding started on a brain development level!
Cannot Spoil a Newborn
I’m super glad, even fourteen years later, to know that my mother’s intuition about holding my baby was right on the money, and that you literally CANNOT spoil a newborn. But, man, I gotta say, it does feel good to know that there’s also a whole lot of science to declare it a fact, now, too!
Can you hold a baby too much? NOPE. Enjoy those newborn snuggles — they’re feeding your newborn baby’s brain!
