Your baby isn't broken.

Every so often I like to give you some big old parenting truths. This post is one of those: Your baby is not broken* if they want to be held all the time. In fact quite the opposite! As my computer programmer husband would say, this is a feature not a bug! To explain this feature though we need to do a bit of time travelling! Imagine it's many thousands of years ago, we live in caves and tigers are roaming about the place looking for lunch. Tigers have a different composition in milk to humans and it means they can leave their baby tigers in the nest for long periods while they go out hunting.

Human milk works differently and babies can't be left for long periods without eating (your baby is also not broken* if they eat often!). Human babies also have an in built protection method from becoming lunch for those pesky tigers. When you put your baby down they will startle awake and yell at you, your hormones then ping into action and drive you to pick up the baby. It is an irresistable force. That crying and those hormones work together to mean cave babies didn't get eaten by tigers becuase they were in an adult's arms. Your baby is a direct descendent of those cave babies! There are no tigers roaming about in our area (as best I know) but babies and our hormones haven't quite figured that out yet so we continue the cycle. This stage will naturally be out grown, and until they can run away from tigers there are slings and carriers to free up your hands! Rachael *This is a sweeping generalisation, if you are concerned that your baby's behaviour is outside of what would be considered normal operating parameters speak to your midwife, health visitor, gp or other healthcare professional.