Your Baby Is Speaking to You: A Visual Guide to the Amazing Behaviors of Your Newborn and Growing Baby

By Kevin Nugent and Abelardo Morell

From an international expert on infant-parent communication, a rich and accessible gift book on baby “language,” gorgeously illustrated with forty black-and-white photographs.

Through intimate access to babies and their families, Dr. Kevin Nugent and acclaimed photographer Abelardo Morell capture the amazingly precocious communications strategies babies demonstrate from the moment they are born.

Your Baby Is Speaking to You illustrates the full range of behaviors—early smiling to startling, feeding to sleeping, listening to your voice and recognizing your face. The newest research—including information on subtle and fleeting behaviors not seen or explained in any other book—illuminates the meaning of the things babies do that concern and delight new parents:
– the language of yawning
– the rich range of cries, and how to understand their meanings
– baby’s earliest “sleep smiles” and sleep states, and what they signify.

Your Baby Is Speaking To You delivers the information parents crave in gentle, accessible style while giving parents the confidence they need to respond to their own baby’s way of communicating during the very first astonishing days and the months beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9780547504490

Kevin Nugent

Kevin Nugent, Ph.D., is director of the Brazelton Institute at Children’s Hospital, Boston, where he has led studies of newborn infants and early parent-child relations for over three decades. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at Harvard Medical School. With T. Berry Brazelton, he developed the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, used in hospitals around the world. Nugent and colleagues also created the Newborn Behavioral Observations system, designed to help parents understand their baby’s behavior.

Book preview

Your Baby Is Speaking to You

A visual guide to the amazing behaviors of your newborn and growing baby

Kevin Nugent, Ph.D. and Abelardo Morell

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

...

...

Copyright

Dedications

Contents

...

Introduction

Sleeping, Crying Eating

The Sleeping Baby

Deep Sleep

Light Sleep

The Full Cry

Fussing

The Search Response

Feeding

The Amazing Newborn

The Fencer Response

Hand to Mouth

The Sleep Smile

First Steps

Hands

Pre-Reaching

The Smile of Discovery

Crawling

Feet

Yawning

Your Baby's Senses

Responding to Sounds

Visual Exploration

Touch

Cuddliness

The Not Very Cuddly Baby

Settling In

Startles

Drowsiness

Overstimulation

Signs of Distress

Soothability

The Not Easily Settled Baby

The Social Newborn

Looking into Your Eyes

Feeding and Communication

The Power of Your Voice

Imitation

Learning

Temperament

The Social Smile

The Growing Baby, the Bigger World

Reaching Out

Exploring

Empathy

Learning to Love

Parent and Baby and the Lifelong Bond

New Challenges

Author's Note

Photographer's Note

Colophon

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT BOSTON NEW YORK 2011

[Image]

Copyright © 2011 by J. Kevin Nugent

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Abelardo Morell

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce

selections from this book, write to Permissions,

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nugent, Kevin.

Your baby is speaking to you : a visual guide to the

amazing behaviors of your newborn and growing

baby / Kevin Nugent.

p. m.

ISBN 978-0-547-24295-8

1. Infants—Development. 2. Parent and infant. I. Title.

HQ774.N84 2010

305.232—dc22 2010017207

Book design by Melissa Lotfy

Printed in China

SCP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Una, Aoife, and David Declan—le mo bhuiochas, mo ghra go deo.

—J. KEVIN NUGENT

To Laura and Brady, who once were my babies.

—ABELARDO MORELL

Contents

Introduction [>]

Sleeping, Crying, Eating

The Sleeping Baby [>]

Deep Sleep [>]

Light Sleep [>]

The Full Cry [>]

Fussing [>]

The Search Response [>]

Feeding [>]

The Amazing Newborn

The Fencer Response [>]

Hand to Mouth [>]

The Sleep Smile [>]

First Steps [>]

Hands [>]

Pre-Reaching [>]

The Smile of Discovery [>]

Crawling [>]

Feet [>]

Yawning [>]

Your Baby's Senses

Responding to Sounds [>]

Visual Exploration [>]

Touch [>]

Cuddliness [>]

The Not Very Cuddly Baby [>]

Settling In

Startles [>]

Drowsiness [>]

Overstimulation [>]

Signs of Distress [>]

Soothability [>]

The Not Easily Settled Baby [>]

The Social Newborn

Looking into Your Eyes [>]

Feeding and Communication [>]

The Power of Your Voice [>]

Imitation [>]

Learning [>]

Temperament [>]

The Social Smile [>]

The Growing Baby, the

Bigger World

Reaching Out [>]

Exploring [>]

Empathy [>]

Learning to Love [>]

Parent and Baby and

the Lifelong Bond [>]

Author's Note [>]

Photographer's Note [>]

[Image]

Introduction

Shortly after I came to Children's Hospital in Boston more than three decades ago, I had the opportunity to attend hospital rounds with Dr. Berry Brazelton, acknowledged even then as a pioneer in infancy research. I still remember watching the steel-framed crib being wheeled into a quiet corner of the newborn nursery and seeing the tiny one-day-old infant, tightly swaddled, her head covered with a cotton bonnet, with only her small pink face peeping out. We all became silent as the young mother entered. She sat by the crib with an expression of anxiety and vulnerability, understandably self-conscious in the presence of the white-coated observers.

As Dr. Brazelton began to unswaddle the baby, I did not know what to expect. Not yet a father, I assumed that a one-day-old was just a very tiny baby, nothing more. He tested her foot reflexes and flexed her arms and legs, examining her muscle tone. By now the baby was wide awake, and suddenly Dr. Brazelton was holding a red ball about twelve inches from her eyes. Can a newborn baby really see? I wondered. At that very moment her eyes locked onto the bright ball and began to track it. She can see! the mother blurted, shaking her head in disbelief. When Dr. Brazelton began to talk to the baby in lilting tones—using her first name, Sarah—her eyes widened and brightened. There was nothing random about her responses now. Her look was steady, and there was a sureness to the back-and-forth, give-and-take rhythm of the interaction between baby and doctor.

It was on that day that I encountered for the first time the powerful gaze of the human newborn. This one-day-old baby was no passive organism waiting for the world to shape her destiny. Sarah's ability to see and hear was indisputable, but it was her seemingly natural curiosity, her readiness to engage and connect with her environment that so impressed me. She was indeed a person. But when I caught sight of the young mother, her eyes now filled with tears as she pressed her infant close to her breast, repeating her name, no longer conscious of our presence, my thoughts were arrested for the second time that day. I was struck by the strength and tenderness of the mother-infant bond. It was as if this mother had just discovered the sheer depth of her feelings toward her baby.

But if the relationship

Reviews for Your Baby Is Speaking to You

[avanders_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great visual demonstration of various "communications" your baby attempts with nice little blurbs to go along with the picture.