How Parents and Caregivers Can Practice Nurtured Care

I am a neuroscientist, doula, and mother on a mission to improve mental health for the next generation. Poor mental health is a serious and worsening worldwide crisis (1). Much of the focus on improving mental health has been to find treatments for individuals who are already suffering. My career studying neuroscience and practicing as a doula has informed me that there is an additional and powerful way to improve mental health outcomes. The knowledge I’ve gained has inspired me to communicate this knowledge to parents, perinatal professionals, and the world. We can get to the root of the problem, and neuroscience can show us the way.

To make a difference in alleviating mental health struggles, we need a revolutionary cultural shift in awareness and intention to the time in which mental health is formed. Research indicates that fundamental brain structures for lifelong mental health are extensively built during infancy, from conception to three years old. Put simply, that means that infancy is a special season of life to build a baby’s brain for lifelong mental health. These brain areas include the amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and the oxytocin system. They each can be shaped towards resilience. The best way to do this is by providing babies with highly nurturing experiences (2).

There are many ways we can intentionally provide highly nurturing experiences to babies. Nurturing touch is one of the most powerful ways we can support a baby’s developing brain and build brain structures for mental health. Instinctively, parents want to be in contact with their children—it’s why leaving your baby alone to cry can feel so painful. It is painful, for both parents and children. If you have been denying yourself and your baby that close attention, be assured that being in touch with your baby as much as possible is a healthy biological drive, and, importantly, provides essential, brain-building experiences.

Here are a few simple ways parents and caregivers can practice nurtured care in children up to three years old:

1. Practice skin-to-skin from 0-3 months.

Take your baby’s clothes off except for their diaper, then take off your shirt. Lay the baby’s body on your chest, with their nose facing up and their airway open, so you are skin to skin. Then cover the baby’s body with a blanket and relax and breathe. I recommend this practice in the first three months for all parents and caregivers for at least 60-90 minutes a day up to several hours a day. If someone close comes over to meet your baby, you can even get them a robe and set them up for skin-to-skin.

2. Provide lots of holding and loving touch.

You can hold your baby as much as you want and as much as your baby needs. Hug them, kiss them, and cuddle them. Let them sleep on you (while you are awake), wear them in a carrier, touch them as you speak softly to them and look in their eyes. Lie them on your belly as they do tummy time.

3. Providing contact or closeness for feeding.

When you are feeding your baby milk, by any means, hold your baby in your arms and give them all of your attention and presence. You can make eye contact, hold your baby’s hand and speak to them lovingly.

4. Providing unconditional access to being held or touched.

Babies need a lot of holding and touch and they need you to respond to this need unconditionally. When babies are needing closeness they might reach up for you, cry or ask to be picked up. They flourish when we respond and provide what they need.

Infancy is a special season of life that offers a unique opportunity to boost mental health for babies and for future generations. We are deeply in need of a nurture revolution, a profound increase of nurture in early life. Nurture for babies, nurture for parents, more connection, more intuition, and more joy. Babies need deep connected positive relationships in the first three years of their life, and beyond.