Tips for Growing Your Baby's Brain

Tip #3: Hold Your Baby

You can never hold a baby too much.

For the first few months after birth, four areas of the brain are rapidly developing: the brainstem, the sensorimotor cortex, the cerebellum, and the thalamus.
These brain areas will help your child to regulate emotions, breathing, heart rate, coordination, balance, and body movement. They will also help your baby to respond to and understand touch.
Holding your baby at least three hours a day is the one thing you can do that will most help these areas of your baby's brain develop in a healthy way.
Young babies cannot control their arms and legs and are used to the feeling of being contained and warm after spending nine months inside the mother's body. Birth is a very big change for them. Uncontrolled body movements, like they experience while being changed, can be scary to them.
The first thing babies need to learn is that their world can be a safe and secure place and what better place can there be but in the arms of a parent?
Holding your baby should be done gently and predictably.
This way your baby will learn to associate your touch with feelings of warmth and comfort. This is how your baby learns to trust you and is the beginning of a lasting relationship.