Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding an infant while on a smartphone can be bad for both mother and baby.
This was one of several findings revealed in an article in last weekend’s Globe and Mail newspaper by Eric Andrew-Gee.
Under the provocative query, “Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can’t you put it down?” Andrew-Gee outlines some of the emerging research into the many effects of the ubiquitous use of smartphones.
Some of the most surprising findings were the changes in family life.
How important that gaze is…
Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and research associate in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, co-authoured a book in 2013 titled, ‘The Big Disconnect’.
She had interviewed 1,000 children from the ages of 4 to 18 and heard that many of them no longer run to greet parents at the door, because so often the parents enter on the phone, leaving the children waiting to be acknowledged.
“To children, the feeling is often one of endless frustration, fatigue and loss.” Andrew-Gee quotes Steiner-Adair.
But even more alarming is the damage the distraction can cause to the mother-baby bond created in nursing and feeding an infant, that is understood to provide the emotional framework for life.
“Try to remember with most times that you’re feeding baby that you’re really interacting at a soul level”
Attie Sandink is a registered nurse and lactation consultant and educator in Burlington, Ontario, just 50 kilometres southwest of Toronto.
One of the pioneers in lactation consulting, she has helped and supported women in breastfeeding, and early family life for over thirty years.
She explains what is going on physiologically and emotionally when the parent looks at the baby.
“If the mother is gazing in the eye, and the baby is feeding back and gazing again, what’s happening is there is a co-regulation of both mom and baby and they’re stimulating each other positively in a feedback that really brings them together.”
Sandink says we all know this feeleing.
“We all sort of thrive on that reassurance when we look in each other’s eyes.”
Researchers investigating what’s happening in infant brains are cautioning against what Andrew-Gee describes in his piece as “digital drift”. They stress the importance of the parents’ gaze.
“Really what the eyes do, is the gazing is the nervous system of the brain stimulating back and forth behaviour, so there’s a neuro-connection and it’s really called the social nervous system.” Sandink explains.
“So there’s an integration of all the nerves, especially five specific cranial nerves, and one of them is the Vagus nerve, and that really helps the baby, as well as the mother, to self-regulate and to synchronise the brain waves which they really need to support each other.”
Attie Sandink is careful not to make mothers feel bad, and understands the social isolation that can often come with a newborn.
She advises mothers to limit smartphone activity when feeding their babies.
“Try to remember with most times that you’re feeding baby that you’re really interacting at a soul level or at an eye-to-eye level,” she encourages new mothers.
“If the baby’s awake, that’s the time the baby’s looking for that Vagal response and that leads to reassurance and a feeling of safety and security in that mother-baby relationship, which works with the dad as well.” says Sandink.
With files from the Globe & Mail and CBC
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