Teaching Green Parents about Aquatic Nurture

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Baby baths – every parent knows about baby baths. We do them on a regular basis! But Francoise Freedman in her article in “Green Parent” magazine shows us that bathtime can be more than just about getting baby clean. Birthlight Baby Swimming is a progressive introduction to movement in the water, with a focus on the connection and communication between parents and their babies. The foundations set in home-baths with ‘relaxed support’ in our Aquatic Nurture programme.  The ways in which Amazonian toddlers become buoyant and dive effortlessly have been a lasting inspiration to give babies the lead rather than pretend to ‘teach’ them to swim.

The bath is calming, stimulating and multisensory all at once. But most often, the ways in which we handle newborns shapes the bath experience. With responsive handling, daily baths can become shared moments of pleasure that enhance the early weeks and months for parents and babies together. The Birthlight Aquatic Nurture short course responds to the need of restoring the enjoyable dimension of newborns’ baths for new families at home. Baby bathing used to be -and sometimes still is-, part of hospital maternity care. Our aim is to empower parents to bathe their newborns confidently at home in their mutual space, rhythm, timing and intuition. In the process, parents come to appreciate what Marshall Klaus called ‘the amazing talents of the newborn’. Based on teaching the Birthlight simple practices over many years, we know that with minimal guidance, new mums and dads can lose their initial fears and gain confidence to engage with their newborns’ bath experience. Bonding, this magical connection, is facilitated. The cascade of benefits to parents and babies from happy baths in the early postnatal period cannot be underestimated, particularly at this time of restricted support due to the pandemic.

For those interested, the full article appears in the May issue of the Green Parent magazine.