You still remember the day he told you the test was positive. You even sigh in shock, remembering how you got excited at that moment, and how you started to imagine what it would be like: what pregnancy would be like, what the delivery would be like and how it would be the moment when you would finally take your baby and would you feel all those emotions that people explain.
And it was wonderful when the first days you could take her in her arms, sleep her, cradle her, ... in short, take care of her and feel that you were not doing so badly by observing that with you she also relaxed and slept, as fully trusting in your ability to make her feel safe
However, since you returned to work everything changed a bit. You spent many hours away from home, and instead of having two people for the house and the baby, only one remained, she, for both; and normally, in solitude, it is impossible to get it all forward. So since then, when you get home from work, you take care of everything you can and when you can finally be with your baby you realize that He doesn't want to be with you and rejects you.
It's normal, it's complicated hours
If we talk about a small baby, days or weeks, the usual thing is that in case of crying do so by hunger, or by the time it is. If it is because of hunger and take a tit, it is clear that there are no parents to do: "Honey, wait, do not shower yet, you are looking for my arm ...". But if you have already eaten it is likely that I cried because it's bad time.
Many babies close "the blind" at seven or eight in the afternoon (we often talk about it as colic of the infant). They are hours when the sunlight goes down and they begin to feel tired, sleepy and overwhelmed throughout the day ... and then they enter a strange vicious circle in which they want to sleep but they can't because they are as if they were overwhelmed, and as they cry, they still surpass plus.
It's normal, mother there is only one
When they are a little older and we no longer speak in terms of days or weeks, but in terms of months, then the question is more related to the much needed emotional bond that the baby has created with the mother. Experts say that all babies, even those born at term, arrive in the world premature: too early because they are born very immature (and so they cry so much at first), needing many arms or in some cases porting, as if we were talking about kangaroos.
It is what we know as extrogestation, and it is a time when the baby spends a lot of time with the mother, in her body, her arms and with her chest, as if she continued to form and grow outside. Whether it is done or not, whether the baby is so dependent or not, it is usual that it is she who takes care of the baby more because she is the one who usually takes the longest casualty. This causes the baby to have mom as her primary caregiver and as that figure to turn to when she feels in a certain danger.
Of course, dad is not dangerous, but he is not a mother. And there are babies that for the simple fact of not being with mom, they already cry. In other words: although dad loves him more than anything, and although he is his father, blood of his blood, for the baby, his arms are time without those of mom, and then he complains and cries.
Don't force but be there
What to do then? On some occasions I have received inquiries of this kind, from parents who ask me how to act because their son or daughter, the little person for whom he would give his life, avoids him or even cries in despair if he tries to take her in his arms. Other times it is the mother who feels fatal to see that the baby just wants to be with her, even guilty for having created that bond that doesn't exist yet with the father, as if he had done something wrong.
The truth is that It is nobody's fault, but something normal in many babies, who need a little more time to feel safe in the arms of a person other than a mother. What is recommended, then, is not force the situation. Contrary to what many people advise, spending more time with the baby, if he is crying, is not positive. First, because when a baby cries he does not see you, second, because he does not hear you either, and third, because if he is crying and suffering, the more difficult time it will be, the next time it seems minimally desirable to share time with you.
Therefore, the ideal is that the approaches are when the baby feels completely safe, and this is in mom's arms. When he is awake with mom and is not eating, dad can slowly approach and tell him things, sing to him, play games, and show him, little by little, that he is a person he can trust, and that he has nothing dangerous.
As the days and weeks go by, Dad will become one more and each time he will agree to spend more time with him. That is why it is said that you do not have to force yourself, but that you have to be there, interacting with the baby so that he knows you and you are gradually creating a relationship.
And so there will come a time when he can be with both of them without any problem, and then another moment, towards the two years normally, in which even the opposite can happen, that dad become the most amazing being he knows; and then you laugh remembering those times when I could not even see you and laugh too (while you clean the drool that falls) when you realize that it counts on you for everything.
