Your
Amazing Newborn,
written by Marshall H. Klaus, M.D. and Phyllis H.Klaus, C.S.W., M.F.C.C.
remains the authoritative text on newborn behavior since it was first published
in 1998. I especially enjoy the chapter,
“Waking to the World,” that describes the quiet alert state that many newborns
experience within the first hour of life.
Newborns continue to spend about ten percent of any 24-hour period in
quiet alertness during the first week of life, though seldom for as long as the
duration of the first time. I have
observed the quiet, alert state and it is, indeed, wondrous.
During the
first hour, newborns in the quiet alert state look directly at their mother’s
and father’s faces and eyes and can respond to voices. The newborn’s eyes are wide open, bright and
shiny. Dr. and Mrs. Klaus suggest that
this special alert state paves the way for the attachment between the newborn
and those who care for him/her. “The
intensity and appealing power of this little bud of humanity meeting the world
for the first time are all but irresistible.”
Child
psychiatrist Peter Wolff, psychologist Heinz Prechtl, and pediatrician T. Berry
Brazelton studied newborns extensively.
They concluded that newborns have six different states of consciousness
according to wakefulness or sleep. There
are two sleep states: quiet and active;
three alert states: quiet, active, and crying; and drowsiness – a transition
between sleep and wakefulness. I think
they forgot the seventh state: silly drunk with
milk!
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