carpe vestri vita
Posts: 175
Karma: 35 Baby: 4+1P Latest: (Pg)576w 1d
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« Reply #15 on: September 10, 2010, 07:11:10 PM » |
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Thanks Waterdreamer!
McDume, I was about to admonish you for your google skills when I realized I didn't mention that the well documented newborn crawling phenomenon is frequently called the breast crawl. That is the evolutionary reason for the reflex. Babies can crawl to the breast and have their first meal exutero. If you re-search "newborns crawling" the first video result (I used google, it's between the second and third non-sponsored results) "English - Initiation of Breastfeeding by ..." shows a brand new baby crawling about 4 inches to latch her/himself (it might say, or even show, but I wasn't playing that close of attention) on to the breast. The third and fourth results also document this.
Alternately you could just search youtube (or your prefered video site) for "breast crawl" there are many to choose from. Now you can watch a newborn crawl. It's quite beautiful: The struggle, the triumph... it's just great.
As for an inability to hold their head up AT ALL at birth that is insanely rare and I'm sorry to hear that all your children have suffered from it. Have you looked into possible genetic causes? Other children start by just being able to hold their head up for seconds, but the skill improves exponentially over the following weeks.
[Example: Zed was born stronger than average (he bruised my ribs kicking me once), he could hold his head up for 45 seconds, which seemed to line up perfectly with how much of the world he wanted to see at once. By a week he could hold his head up for 10 minutes without setting it down. But I suspect that was just because he's also always needed more sleep than average. He easily slept 20 hours until he was more than a month old. He gets about 16 now (the average for this age is 14).]
[Example 2: Fox could hold his head up for about 20 seconds at birth. He's just shy of 3 months old now and is crawling effortlessly and is rocking back and forth on his hands and knees preparing for creeping. He's a monster; 99th percentile all around, so it's not a small head he's lifting.]
Of course I have hands on experience. Every mother does because we tend to group ourselves (into mother's groups no less!) with people with similar philosophies. We watch each other's children grow and develop, offering advice when needed, sharing our experiences. In the last 3 months, in my breastfeeding group alone, there have been 17 babies born and all but one crawled to the breast. The one that did not was very premature and hospital procedure got in the way of the best interest of the child. While I only witnessed one of these births first hand, I've seen the videos of 7 others, and detailed stories about all of them.
An important note though, not all of these women believe that skill is permanent. Those who follow the right side up idea have babies that still belly crawl (plus Fox, who's nearly creeping) but those that don't have immobile, or maybe rolling, babies. The women whose babies do not move think that the other babies are special and different, not that newborn crawling can develop into actual crawling, creeping, walking.
It's not my job to lecture them, nor you, about how things could have been better for their babies. As long as no one is abusing their kids, they will develop fine. All healthy five year olds can crawl, walk, roll. And in that vane it does not matter which path one takes to get there.
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