Somebody will tell you that you are holding the baby too much. Usually kindly, usually someone who loves you, often in a kitchen.
I would like to give you something better to say back, and it is not a parenting opinion. It is how the input works.
Touch is a sense. That sounds obvious until you sit with the size of it. Skin is the largest sensory surface a person has, it is among the earliest senses to come online before birth, and it is running continuously from the first day. Pressure, warmth, the small rhythmic sway of being carried across a room. All of that is information travelling into a nervous system whose whole job right now is figuring out what the world is like and what settled feels like in it.
Which is why I do not think of touch as a nice extra layered on top of the important stuff. As best I understand early development, it sits in the same category as food and sleep. Not pleasant. Not enriching. An input, in the way that inputs matter.
Which brings me to the analogy I keep coming back to. Sunlight for a plant.
Nobody puts a plant in a window as a reward for good behavior. Nobody worries the plant is getting spoiled, or wonders whether all that light is going to make it dependent. Sunlight is not a treat you give a plant. It is one of the things the plant runs on, and the plant is built assuming it will be there.
That is the category touch belongs in for a baby. Not indulgence. Input.
So here is the part I actually want you to take home, and I want to be careful to hand it to you as permission rather than as one more thing to manage.
There is no quota here. No target number of minutes, no scoreboard, nothing you can come up short on by the end of the day. This is not a practice you have to schedule, and it is not a new item for the list. Ordinary life with a baby delivers it constantly and without anybody trying: feeding, carrying her out to the car, a diaper change, wearing her around the kitchen while you make dinner one-handed, a hand on her back at two in the morning.
You have already been doing this all week. It counts. All of it counts.
And nobody spoils a baby by holding her. That worry is old and it is sturdy and it is worth setting down.
There is one small thing worth mentioning to me, and it is an observation rather than a concern. Some babies are harder to hold comfortably. She arches, or she settles on one shoulder and fights the other, or she will only turn her head one way while she is being carried. That is a movement observation, it is the kind of thing I can check, and it is useful information. Tell me what you notice.
Everything else about this one is just permission.
Hold her as much as you want. You are not spoiling her, you are feeding a system that is built to expect it.
Keep reading: Babies and Development
Individual results vary. Chiropractic care does not diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or condition. This information is educational and not a substitute for medical care. Sláinte provides wellness chiropractic care and works alongside your medical team.
Ready to put this into practice for your family?
Your first visit includes our INSiGHT nervous system scans. X-rays, if clinically necessary, are always discussed with you first.
